Behind the wheel!

When we were making the plans to come to Hawaii, buying a car was so out of the picture. We specifically rented an apartment in the middle of the action to avoid having to drive. Butttt.. plans change! I actually got a really awesome job about 30 minutes away from our place which would be a hour ride on the bus, which I didn't want to endure. Plus, we basically fell in love with the North Shore which is about a 30 minute drive... after much deliberation we decided we did indeed want a car..! While I spent days at work Mark did research online and found a great car with few miles for a good price! The one plus with Hawaii is you can't really take cross country road trips with the cars and rack up the miles. Here in Honolulu you spend a lot of time at stop lights or waiting .. and not necessarily putting on a ton of miles. So actually car shopping here was a little easier than on the mainland. Now I can get my late night malsada fix after work too ;)!

Driving in Hawaii is also an experience that is hard to describe. We know that Honolulu has the worst traffic in the whole US, and part of it is due to so many people coming and going from the city but I think most of it is due to the style of driving here. For example if the limit is 35 and you're like me, you go at least 40 to keep up with most of the other drivers. Here it's almost reverse, if it's 35 and you want to go with the flow of traffic you will be going about 25-30 mph max.  If someone does drive the speed limit plus 5, it feels like they are flying and it's almost always the touristy cars (Mustang and Camero convertibles, been there crashed that haha =p ). The drivers here are very laid back, and if you need to switch lanes, you can almost always count on someone waving you in, even in the worst possible moments but if you throw them a Shaka, all is good! 

This is a good and a bad thing when driving.  It's good because it's not that scary driving here knowing everyone is laid back and will sort of help you if you get confused driving. Some roads here do not make sense at all, a lot of weird one way roads that turn into two way randomly, and a ton of turn only spots which is hard for a newbie. The bad part about this driving style is that if you're in a hurry, good luck getting to where you need to be.  We had a few places we had to go to before they closed and the traffic is so slow, people letting others into their lane all of time, cars stopping to let tourists jay walk across the road, and of course cars stopping in the middle of the road to talk to one another for a bit. So we've already learned if you need to be somewhere at a certain time, leave about 20-30 minutes earlier to help in case any of the above happens. One cool thing about driving here, is that you will almost always get or receive the Shaka (hang loose) from someone driving if you let them in your lane, or let someone cross the road :).

Cleo is happy because she can finally go for rides since we don't have a rental anymore! =)

Tomorrow night we will be attending the Lantern Floating Festival. The beach it takes place at is actually the closest beach to us... as we like to call it; "our beach". We'll go into it a little more in the next post after we experience it! We will be writing notes to our loved ones on our lantern and then will send it off into the ocean with thousands of others. This fest is all about accepting one another regardless of race, sex, religion, etc. It's about all 40,000+ people coming together as one to honor and remember loved ones who have passed. I don't think we'll make it through the night without crying our eyes out. You can stream it live here tomorrow Monday May 26th from 6-730pm (Hawaii Time). It's going to be a sight to see. We can't wait to share our experience with you in a few days!

Mahalo!

Jen & Mark!