Two Weeks In Paradise Is A Good Thing

But it's time to go home

After two weeks on Maui, Erin and I go home today. We’ve been here long enough to become acclimated to the weather, which will make going home a real challenge. While it’s been consistently sunny and 82-84 here, it’s been wetter and 30-35 degrees cooler in Portland. I suspect our first 24 hours are going to be brutal.

And I’ll have to get used to wearing long pants again…. ;-)

The good news is that we’ll be out of the range of Kim Jong-un’s nuclear missiles, which I admittedly haven’t lost a lot of sleep over these past two weeks.

I’ve enjoyed my time here, but Maui isn’t home, and I am looking forward to returning home. It’s been great being somewhere that feels like it’s the polar opposite of Portland, not just when it comes to the weather. We did get to see last night’s lunar eclipse, which almost certainly wouldn’t have been possible in Portland due to cloud cover.

There’s much about Hawaii generally and Maui, in particular, that makes this a wonderful place to visit. That said, I think this would be a challenging place to live.

Life here on Napili Bay, as it is elsewhere in Hawaii, is expensive, ridiculously so in some cases. Hotel prices are one indication. We’re staying at what on the mainland would be considered a three-star hotel (no one’s serving us drinks by the pool), and it’s still $350 a night. The resort next door starts at $800 a night. If you head south down Maui’s west coast, you’ll reach the Grand Wailea, where Erin and I stayed during our first week while she was attending a medical conference. The non-conference rates there run around $1200 a night. I don’t even want to know what the conference rates were.

And, no, we’re not anywhere near wealthy- at least not enough to be paying those kinds of rates.

Oh, and if you want to enjoy anything but the beach in Maui, you’re going to need to rent a car, which will easily set you back more than $100 a day. I could go on, but you get the idea, right??

It’s easy to relax on the beach and think about how wonderful living in Maui would be. In many respects, I suppose it would be. But, as would be true anywhere, living here is fundamentally different from being a tourist. If you’re visiting, you’re here for a short time, and then you go back home. If you’re living here, you’re thousands of miles (and two time zones) from the West Coast. It’s a six-hour plane ride from Portland. Everything happens earlier due to the time difference (Hawaiian time is five hours earlier than East Coast time, f’rinstance).

Because virtually the entire economy is in one way or another tourism-based, the only people making any real money are the (corporate) property owners, and that money doesn’t stay in Hawaii. There are a lot of young people here, but many have to work two jobs to afford their slice of Paradise. And there aren’t many employment opportunities available outside the hospitality industry. To live comfortably, you’d need to be someone who can work anywhere and who already makes a substantial living before moving to the islands.

Outside of the tourist industry, there isn’t much for someone who wants to live here. The lifestyle is very laid back, but if you’re someone who enjoys live sports or cultural activities, you’re going to be disappointed because unless you live on Oahu and can attend events at the University of Hawaii, there’s not much to look forward to.

It’s an island chain in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, so you can’t just hop in your car and drive to Seattle or Vancouver, B.C. for the weekend, though I can see the island of Molokai just a few miles north across the channel.

The lifestyle here is very different from what we’re used to on the mainland, and many people move to the island without really considering that reality. They sell their belongings, move to Hawaii, and eventually realize that living here is not the same as being a tourist. Eventually, they go home because they didn’t fully consider just how different living here is.

As much as I love being in Hawaii, I don’t think I could live here. Two weeks is about my limit. Perhaps if I had a house of my own, I could extend that time frame, but calling Hawaii home would feel too remote. Erin and I were sitting in a bar on Monday night enjoying happy hour, while on a TV in the background was the Rams-49ers Monday Night Football game. Watching the game felt odd- as if either we or it were on another planet. I know the game was happening because I could see it on the bar’s TV screen, but watching a football game at 230 pm on a Monday afternoon seemed…odd.

As I’m writing this, it’s 430 a.m. and I’m sitting on the lanai outside our hotel room listening to the surf crashing onto the beach. It’s one of my favorite sounds, and it reminds me how genuinely insignificant and transient I am. Every time I hear that sound, it reminds me that the surf has been coming in and going out for millions of years. It was doing so long before I was born, and it will continue long after I’m gone. It’s consistent, persistent, and it never changes. It’s the same sound the surf made when the dinosaurs ruled the countryside the volcanoes were forming these islands.

I love the rhythmic consistency of the waves as they collide with the rocks and the never-ending in-and-out of the waves as they wash in and back out immediately. It’s the same sound the waves made long before a White man ever set foot on these islands. The original Hawaiians heard the same sounds I’m hearing now, and it’s what others who come long after me will continue to hear.

I enjoy remote, but I don’t know that I could make remote- at least THIS distant- my day-to-day reality. I could live somewhere on the Pacific Northwest coast and enjoy the change of seasons, with Hawaii being an escape. That would be ideal, but it’s difficult to imagine living here, though a constant 80-85 and sunny would be tough to argue with, eh?

As happens at the end of every trip, I’m excited to be going home when the end draws near, no matter the length. Finally, I get to see Magnus, Fred, and Sjon. I get to sleep in my own bed. And I get to reclaim my corner of the universe and get back to work on making it what we want it to be.

Perhaps there will be another medical conference in our future or another reason to come back to Hawaii. It’s hard not to love it here, even as expensive as it is.

Paradise doesn’t come cheap, eh?

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