The Geography Teacher on Vacation

Our rental car on the Big Island. I couldn't count how many four-door hardtop Jeeps I saw there. Oh, and they were usually white. 

I've logged a lot of miles on three rental cars on three of the Hawaiian Islands this vacation. It's given me a lot of time to make some observations. 

Oahu is the island I saw the smallest amount of, so I'm not going to comment much on that here. My driving there was really confined to Honolulu and its immediate surroundings. 

The Big Island and Maui boast similar populations: 187,000 and 144,000, respectively. The sheer volume of tourists on the latter, though, probably boosts the number of people here up and above the Hawaii figure. Let's just say they're relatively equal. However, the land masses are quite different in size. One is 4,000 square miles. The other just over 700. (I'll let you figure out which is which.)

Driving from place to place on the big island took some time because the distances were fairly significant. And one goes a long ways between towns. Usually, one is able to drive at near highway speeds there. 

On Maui, however, any drive measured in miles is pretty short by East Coast standards. However the sheer density of people here, and the geographic limitations on what roads can do, make travel times rather long. In this regard the two islands seem like inside-out versions of one another. 

One commonality, though, is that highways usually don't go through neighborhoods. Usually residential areas are set just down- or uphill from the highway. Since the vegetation is pretty thick and the construction style low, I've often realized after the fact that I just passed by a significant town. 

Another commonality: there's not much habitable (for humans at least) in the middle of these islands, so any trek has one traveling around a mountain. 

It's a really unique experience, at least for the driver.