Making the Trip

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For our first year here we lived in furnished vacation rentals (7 places in 10 months) all over Puna. It was an invaluable experience for several reasons: we experienced many different neighborhoods and got a real feel for them, we didn't have to decide what to sell and what to ship without living here, and we weren't burning our bridges. It was also relatively affordable when you consider the fact that utilities were always included and we didn't have to ship or buy household goods like pots and pans until we knew we were going to stay. If Hawaii didn't work we could have gone back to our old life. As it turned out we chose to stay because this is the right place for us, but we went back and sold or gave away almost all our "stuff". It was wrenching to sell a lifetime of memories for pennies on the dollar but most of it really wasn't suitable for our current lifestyle. I really recommend flying over with just your essentials, which in our case was clothes and computers, and rent a furnished place for at least the first few months. There are tons of furnished "vacation" rentals here and most of the owners are happy to give a good discount to someone who is staying for a month or more.

And remember that nothing worth having is easy, the low point for me was when my daughter called on my birthday to tell me that my beloved dog Ursula, who was too old to come with us, had died in her sleep that morning. I had lost a beloved family member and had no close friends here to turn to. Once we buy our own place and I get another dog I will finally feel like I truly have settled in here.

Carol