What it’s REALLY like living in Puna on the Big Island of Hawaii (Funny but True)

good morning everybody we just woke up and we decided we have to make this video because it's already September 17th and it's almost October and we have to get this video out for our patreon who voted on this specific video of 10 things you can't do in Hawaii so we're doing them right now we have the list we're just gonna tell you guys what it is so number one get mail so we don't have an address where we can get US postal we can get UPS and FedEx but we can't get USPS we haven't tried getting FedEx or UPS yeah our neighbors have done it oh yeah but basically when you live where we live in this kind of area you have to get a peel box and the waiting time to get an actual box at your local post office it could take over two years because we apply it about two years ago and nothing yeah and that's actually most places here don't get there like all the subdivisions they don't get mail so it's not there are some places that do have mailboxes that get mail and sometimes we send our mail to our friends in Hilo and they get mail number two walked barefoot you can't walk barefoot here for various reasons the main reason is because the ground is very rough in most places from our own experience on a property we cannot work there so if we don't want to get cuts and scrapes all over right because a lot of the weeds are sharp and a razor blade e razor grass the sensitive growth has swords all over it and then the rest is just all sin there we can't walk on that comfortably but even at the beaches there's all lava there usually and and if it's like black sand beach the sand gets really hot so you try to walk barefoot on that nice and it's like boiling hot yeah now of course you can walk barefoot at certain places but it's not a very barefoot friendly yeah also another barefoot thing there's in this my Italian two other things that you can't do in the island but there's fire ants like in all random public parks try to walk around barefoot you'll probably get bit by fire ants or you might slip on a slug and get okay number three commute by bike this one is pretty true if we say commute by bike successfully and consistently where we are to get into town which is where you would mostly be commuting to right it's like at least like a 20 15 to 20 mile one way and it's mostly on the highway and the main reason why I don't like to do it it's because the weather can be so unpredictable that you could be like oh it's a nice day it's not gonna rain and then you're riding and then halfway through your ride is just starts downpouring and then you get to where we are going soaking wet number four is use salt in a salt shaker or even a salt lamp pulling a bought a salt lamp one day she was so excited she brought it home and then like we started noticing this thing starts just melting it's so humid here that the salt lamps just melt and it was like nice and jagged like looking like a crystal and then all of a sudden is just like this round pink blob and it also leaked all the salt water down our wall so now like the wood and it's like salt in it stays moist might have contributed to some mold in that area over there yeah with the salt shakers it gets all caked up at the top so what we have to do is put it a sealable pouch like airtight and then we have a little spoon in there and that seems to work good yeah and like almost like us for any spices yeah a lot of spices too but salt especially mm-hmm number five have nice things so you can't have nice things here for several reasons one big reason is because the mold on this part of the island the mold is a very prevalent so we have like a really beautiful white dress that you're trying to save or a really nice car that you're trying to not get all gross it's probably gonna get all moldy and disgusting eventually so you can't really have those things here unless you take like a lot of measures to keeping it in good condition like Michael has like all his camera stuff and he has to make sure all the time that he keeps it in his like dry box with all the desiccant in it yeah mm-hmm but that is like a seal Pelican case and it has rubber gaskets and I loaded it with all the stuff that you get in foods that have have to keep things dry like we save those yeah and even like you try to store things away that you don't use much and then when you take them out it just smells horrible you get the air down and maybe wash them all off yeah so here it goes a long way to be like super minimalist and what you have and just like use recycled things as much as you can because nice things do not last here also you can't have nice things because people like to steal your things so if you have like nice things in your house and you go away for a weekend you might come back and see that they're missing because and it's a lot of the time people that leave for a long time and their house is just sitting there and the thieves here just don't take things in your house they'll actually take your whole house we've heard reports that people say tell me windows yeah like windows out of houses take I've heard of people taking entire houses and somebody just recently told me that they had their whole catchment stolen they were only gone a week and I imagine you had a swimming pool in your backyard and you it was gone like that's pretty much what a catchment is so yeah you just can't have right number six swim in a river so in this side of the island there's tons of rivers all over and waterfalls beautiful beautiful stuff so you can go swimming in the rivers because it's super super dangerous I thought this was because of the staff oh okay you can go swimming in the rivers because of various reasons but mostly I feel that it's because it's super dangerous I've heard so many stories of friends who had friends who when jumping in the river and they get sucked down into the lava tubes and died so it's not safe I'm also its flash flooding that could happen super common so the only time you really could swim in the river is if you're willing to risk your life yeah and I actually thought we wrote this down for a different reason if you have any sort of cuts on your so you could potentially get staff and it's happened to a lot of people I had a cut so if you have any open wounds you definitely don't want to go in the rivers because you'll most likely get staff and even had a friend that he thinks that he got an infection in his tooth from the river just the water settled in under his tooth and infected tooth yeah there's so much okay number seven you can't eat local lettuce here alright so the reason why you can't eat lettuce here is because of this disease called rat lungworm disease and that is basically a parasite that gets carried through rats and slugs in a symbiotic cycle of parasite living in this residence legs so the slugs will carry the parasite in them or on them in their slime and when they go on your lettuce they can leave the parasite in their slime or the let the slugs actually stay in the lettuce and they could be like really tiny slugs that you don't see so if you are like Oh I have a garden I'm gonna eat this beautiful lettuce I don't my garden I'm not even gonna wash it because it's organic and pure and then you eat it and then you eat the slug or the slime with the parasite in it you're gonna get meningitis and it can be very very severe even fatal if you eat enough slugs that have the parasite but basically you're paralyzed for at least a year and it's horrible and we don't know anyone personally but we know of people who know people that have gotten it was just like ruining disease yeah so if you were to eat local lettuce that you grew or somebody else here you'd have to like take every leaf off wash it completely and then cut it most people just get a head of lettuce and chop it and it's real easy but it could take you I don't know an extra half hour to do this process you have to really like inspect every leaf and this ghosts not just for lettuce but also for any vegetables that you're growing on the ground that you're eating like directly yeah so most people just buy imported lettuce you know heads of romaine they don't even bother because it's like too risky and then number eight this is also relating to food you can't eat and that is basically all the fruits that you get are mammalian they're super popular such as apples peaches berries watermelon you can't eat it here why because it doesn't grow here so obviously you can get that stuff here but number one it's gonna be way more expensive and number two it's gonna taste horrible so because it's not obviously fresh cuz you have to import it all the way to this island yeah so whenever we go back to the main language oh my god an apple it's exotic yeah like the fruits that used to be common to us and mostly everyone apples and blueberries there now exotic yeah oh and like super expensive getting berries here like a little this little tiny little cartons of blueberries it's like seven dollars like the grocery stores like that pie-ya then you'll probably only get some on them discount once they're like going really moldy and it lasts like they do surprises honey Chris from Washington luckily pretty good all right number nine is big holes and this is something I found out I had no clue that he couldn't really dig holes here so I bought banana kgs first thing I planted was bananas and I bought a shovel to dig a hole fart and as soon as I started digging I realizes there's no dirt it's just all rock so you can't really use a shovel to dig here to dig a hole it's more like just sticking a crowbar called kolbar here and you just move rocks and pull them out so I don't know if that's I guess it's still considered dating but it's not standard like shovel digging dirt so if you're thinking about using a shovel to dig here think again and even in some places the lava is just a slab so you can't dig there number ten number ten last but not least this is something that is very common here that you can't do and I think everyone pretty much knows this that lives here and that is that you can't get attached to anything like places people write things because in this island everything changes and everything moves around constantly but nothing stays the same here like ever and a main example of that most recently is Salah the flows that destroyed such beautiful places that people like held so close to their hearts with like memories and they so they just love to visit all the time and places that they saw in the future that because visit with their kids and such as the warm pond or the champagne ponds the tide pools you've been Poho iki like all of that is completely changed or destroyed you can't go back to the same way that it used to be so you can't in the Palicki case though I think it's actually better yeah you can't actually get there right now but I'm sure they'll build a road to it in the future they have quite a ways to go through lava flow to make a road there but it is a beautiful black sand beach and there's natural warm ponds so yeah but then again like we saw this beautiful beach they were like oh my god I can't wait to see it but right now I know like I can get attached to this beach here because what if it gets this straight again so I'm just like enjoying it or for the memories that it gave me the other day and that's it not gonna get attached to it and even people you can't get attached to people a lot of people come here leave and they leave a lot of our friends come for a year so which a lot of people do they just come here to do like this self transformation and it's really healing place for a lot of people but when it's over they just leave yeah I find that a lot of people don't come here to like settle down they come here really an experience and then the island kind of just like son sent you off on your new adventure so even us like we we haven't been here like permanently since we first got established here we've been coming and going and when I at work like and one of my other jobs I noticed that like every single week people were like getting hired and then fired and then they were leaving it was just like coming and going and then it's a zip lined up like pretty much half of the people that were working there when I started are now gone so like you just have to get used to this like constant motion with people like in and out of your life yep so that's our list of 10 things you can't do in Hawaii a little bit funny that was the intention well it's yes but even it's super true and it's stuff that we wish we knew before coming here but then again it's good discovering things for yourself as you're living here yeah so thank you for watching this video make sure to comment below yeah anything say about our you have you have any input I'm sure you're really hey I can actually do that like that's not true like yeah I know but really enjoy all the comments though and we get when we make a video that gets tons of comments we love to read them all yeah um and if maybe we can make like like a follow-up video some of these things to go more in depth about it like so yeah thanks for watching guys and we'll see you in the next video

Channel: OffGridHawaii

Views: 448,041

Keywords: offgridhawaii, shipping container homes, big island, big island hawaii, big island volcano, growing food, off grid, off grid living, off grid homestead, off grid hawaii, hawaii, living in hawaii, what its like to live in hawaii, hawaii life, shipping container house, rat lung worm, fruit, permaculture, food forest, moon and rock, kilauea eruption, pohoiki, theft in hawaii, theft of big island, drugs in hawaii, meth in hawaii, meth on big island, live in hawaii

Id: mVSa0bp5T3Q

Length: 16min 46sec (1006 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018