Thoughts (OK… anxiety) about driving on the “wrong” side of the road — which, ironically, is the right side of the road as opposed to the left — became my Roman Empire in the lead-up to my trip to Hawai‘i.
So how did it go?
Waaaay easier than I expected.
I fucking loved my Jeep Wrangler, too, which I booked through Hertz Australia and picked up at the depot, a short shuttle ride from the airport. Hertz at Kona Keahole Airport has a lot of negative reviews on Google (3.7 stars average), but my experience was five stars.
As a side note, there were so many white Jeep Wranglers on the island that I had to commit the licence plate to memory so I could find it in parking lots because it didn’t have keyless entry, even though it was new with just over 8,000 miles on the gauge. Yes, that’s right, this was key-in-lock old-timey access. And locking the driver’s side didn’t automatically trigger all the other door locks. I had to lock each individually — something I didn’t realise for a few days, so I was leaving the vehicle unlocked unintentionally for a while. Although it did have a push-button start, a reversing camera and CarPlay, so I’m not complaining.
My wheels for 10 days.
After familiarising myself with the vehicle’s controls while I cooled down in the air-conditioning on its highest and coldest setting (it was bloody humid even though November is the end of Autumn there), I hit play on my By the Eye, By the Hand Spotify playlist, set Google Maps to take me to Kona Wine Market, drove out of the lot, turned right onto Aulepe Street, right onto Halalu Street, left onto Keahole Airport Road, and right onto HI-19 (or Queen Ka‘ahumanu Highway and also part of the Hawai‘i Belt Road).
It was mind-blowing, exciting, empowering and a little nerve-wracking all at once.
I said aloud, “Holy fuck, I am actually doing this” (or words to that effect).
After stopping for supplies at Kona Wine Market and Island Naturals Market & Deli, I set Google Maps to take me to the guest house on Leilani Street in Holualoa that I had booked. I thought I had pinned the route to stay on HI-19, but before I knew it, I was on the Kuakini Highway instead, and the traffic was crawling. It was crawling on the HI-19, too, but Kuakini Highway required a few more turns from me, and I wasn’t sure I was up to it yet. But maybe it was Hawai‘i and its aloha spirit pushing me out of my comfort zone on purpose.
Driving around the island was a breeze and a delight. Sure, there were a few impatient drivers, but I can count them on two hands, and you’ll find those everywhere. There was more traffic than I anticipated, but it flowed smoothly and courteously. I didn’t have to navigate any roundabouts, but there were lots of traffic lights.
At most traffic lights, there is a dedicated right turn lane, which, after “yielding” (i.e. giving way) to pedestrians and traffic, allows you to turn right when safe. Even at traffic lights without this dedicated lane, you can still turn right on a red light, provided you’ve yielded. Like Australia, there are green arrows that give you the right-of-way to turn left, while solid green means you have to yield to oncoming traffic, but unlike Australia, there are also signs attached to these traffic lights that take the guesswork out of it for drivers who might not be so familiar with the rules. Signage is everywhere! Even on the open road, where Australians take for granted a broken line automatically means you can overtake if safe, road signs in Hawai‘i at the beginning of broken lines and unbroken lines tell drivers they can pass if safe or that they cannot pass, respectively.
There are also lots of stop signs, and after stopping, if there’s oncoming traffic and they flash their high beams at you, it means they’ve seen you and will slow down to allow you to turn left across their lane in front of them. It’s all very civilised.
When double lanes merge into one, there’s no rush, and every car lets another car slide into the single lane. It flows like a choreographed dance. It’s the same when cars are trying to turn right into your lane; if your lane of vehicles isn’t travelling at great speed, you simply gesture to the driver and allow them to turn right and merge in front of you, and the car behind you does the same for the next right-turning vehicle and so on.
I got used to “throwing a shaka” 🤙🏻 to say thanks.
Most residential streets have 25 mph (40 kph) speed limits, and the highest I saw on a highway was 60 mph (96½ kph). It wasn’t unusual for traffic to be flowing at +5 mph over the limit and up to +10 and +15 mph (so 120 kph) on some of the more open highways, although I did see a couple of vehicles pulled over by police, including one that passed me at significant speed. Some of the older highways are narrow and bumpy, but there are also a lot of new roads, given they have to be reconstructed following lava flows.
There are streetlights in towns, obviously, but in Australia, I’m used to seeing highway intersections lit up with floodlights. On the Big Island, though, excessive lighting is restricted due to light pollution for the benefit of the observatories on the summit of Maunakea. But the road markings and signage are second to none. The reflectors embedded into the road surface on highways were incredible and so closely spaced. I’ve never seen anything like it. Red on the right, white on the left and yellow in the middle. In the same vein, the lines between lanes, whether broken or unbroken, single or double, were always yellow, which served as a brilliant reminder for this Aussie driver — I simply looked for the yellow line/s before turning at an intersection and made sure I stayed to the right of them. White lines would have served a similar purpose, I suppose, but the distinctive colour compared to other road markings provided me with much more confidence at busy intersections.
I appreciated the reflective markers when I was driving back from Waimea on Wednesday night after visiting Uila Records, where they had pizza and live music. I headed off mid-afternoon, and it was blowing a gale. I thought the soft top was going to turn into a sail at any given moment and whip me off the road. The wind was pretty intense both up the North Kohala Coast road (ʻAkoni Pule Highway) and down the Kohala Mountain Road, but the Jeep was steady and solid.
My Jeep also handled the road to Mahai’ula Beach in Kehaka Kai State Park with ease. Technically, I’m not sure my contract allowed me to drive on this road in a rental vehicle since it wasn’t paved all the way, but the high clearance handled the potholes, ruts and drops with ease. I was the first in after the ranger, but he was obviously familiar with the road, so I wasn’t able to keep up with his vehicle to guide me. At one stage, I stopped and allowed the pickup truck behind me to pass, so I followed it and felt a bit more comfortable navigating some of the rubble (e.g. seeing the pickup truck’s wheels spin before gripping gave me an indication of what I would experience). I didn’t need to engage 4WD, but the Jeep’s clearance was essential. In fact, on the way out, the section where the wheels spun had obviously deterred a lot of drivers in low-clearance vehicles, so there was a makeshift parking lot just before that section, which was inconvenient and inconsiderate, given where they had chosen to park was the most navigable width of the track for people on the way in. Bloody tourists! 😂 Below is a 46-second YouTube video of someone else’s experience. It’s just a tiny snippet of the journey, which takes about 15 minutes or so, but it’s 100% accurate and possibly one of the tamer stretches of the road. There were a few 8-inch drops and rubbly parts. (Apologies in advance if you suffer from motion sickness.)