Hawaii Day 3: Polynesian Cultural Center

Day three on Oahu was awesome! We started the day by heading to a nearby state park for an innocent 'hike' through the jungle. It started out easy enough, but soon turned into a muddy trek fighting our way through the plants. I was shocked at how little the trails were marked. Occasionally there were different colored plastic ties on trees. It made no sense. The view was awesome though, and it sure was memorable. 

 I think John got a lot of mosquito bites while taking this picture. :(

There was this massive tree toppled over, and when we went exploring around it we happened upon a trail. Yeah, they need better signage. Pretty cool though. 

Starting to get pretty muddy. We had to wash out our shoes that night.

Back at our rental we stopped and enjoyed the scenery, and washed off our muddy legs in the outdoor heated shower. It was delightful. 

We loved the Plumeria trees everywhere. It was common to see flowers like these just fallen to the ground around the trees. We loved it so much that we chose a plumeria start as the gift to give my mom from Hawaii. 

 These trees were so fun. Hardly any leaves, but these beautiful flowers. We wonder if it could have been a little early in the year for leaves, but maybe that doesn't matter in Hawaii. And of course the hibiscus had our heart. They were everywhere.

 Next on the agenda was a little drive up to Laie and playing on the beach. On the way there we spotted this tiny beach on the side of the road with a huge swing looking out to the water. We loved it and stopped and got a photo.

Another shot of the rental with the chickens that woke us up before dawn. Good thing Hawaii is three hours behind Phoenix. :) 

We also saw in the neighbor's yard some citrus trees. It made us think of home. :) I am surprised that it isn't too wet for citrus in Hawaii. 

Next was the Polynesian Cultural Center. We loved it! I think our main take away was just an appreciation for the variety of cultures and heritage from Polynesia. It really just widens your perspective on life and the world. 

Also, we got these cool arm stamps from the New Zealand island. :) 

 One of my favorite parts--going on a canoe ride through the park.

We ended the night at a luau and saw the Ha: Breathe of Life show. In a nut shell, too much food, fabulous dancing, and wicked cool fire dancing. 

These pictures aren't in order. Earlier in the day we went to Hukilau Beach and had a blast in the surf with boogie boards and wet suits. It was a little cooler, and the wet suits were perfect. 

It was so fun to try to catch the wave just right to ride it in. I was a little bit luckier than John at how far I could ride it in, either that or I am just smaller and lighter.

There we are at the beginning of our afternoon/evening at the PCC. The forecast was thunderstorms and check out that blue sky.

First up was Samoa. Yeah, we are not great at starting fire by rubbing those sticks together. Memorable from their presentation was the fire dancing and palm tree climbing. We also learned how to make a fish from palm leaves. John wasn't too bad with the baton twirling--in a masculine, potentially fire twirling way, not girly. :)

Next up was New Zealand or Aotearoa as they called it. We particularly liked how they had all of these games that would be traditionally taught to children that actually were preparing them for handling weapons. Those poi balls were hard to manage. New Zealand was also the only island represented that has four seasons on its islands. That was manifest in its much more substantial buildings.

We liked watching the island canoe shows. There was fun dancing, made all the more cool by doing it on a floating vessel. I have to say the men doing the haka were intimidating despite wearing a skirt, necklace, and flowers in their hair. They were scary, especially their eyes.

We also visited the island of Hawaii, and had to get a pic with that cute sign. We enjoyed the introduction to the hula, but it is definitely not something that John and I are built for dancing.

Ah, we want to go back so bad! 

Gorgeous plumeria bloom.

In Tahiti or maybe Tonga there was a spear throwing competition. It was a weighted tip spear with a target 25 feet away. I was pretty proud to have won two competitions in a row. Talk about beginners luck! We also had more dancing lessons there. :)

We also went on a fun canoe ride through the center. I think maybe our guide was supposed to be telling us stuff, but he didn't. :) At least we got to go. It was dumping rain right before this, so it was closed and we caught the last ride of the day. 

Beautiful grounds! Not pictured the island of Fiji. What I remember about that stop was the fun music making with hollow tubes pounded on the ground in fun patterns. What also blew my mind was that the presenter said that all of the islands in the Pacific had been discovered 3,000 years ago (maybe it was 2,000?), but it was a long time ago. That's crazy! Those islands are spread out over so much area!

It makes you appreciate the historical background of the explorers on Moana. :)

Our last island was Tonga. They had fun music participation, dancing, and most surprising nose flute playing. Gross.

Hawaii Day 2

On our second day in Hawaii, we headed to the Makapu’u lighthouse and tidepools at low tide. This was recommended to us by Norma, and we looked into it on TripAdvisor. What we found out was that people thought the rock scramble down to the the tidepools was very dangerous. What we found out in person was that it was nothing more dangerous than what we do at Lake Powell fairly regularly. And it was awesome!

Beautiful drive, beautiful hike, fun rock scramble, amazing crashing waves, and dramatic, windy cliffs.

We were nervous that the "trail" we had to climb down to the tidepools would be an unreasonably steep cliff. We had pretty much given up on it when we came across the actual trail head.

 

 Sea anemone and tidepools!

 We loved the rugged lava rock and the crashing waves. See the sea arch in front of John? 

 Beautiful cliffs with the lava rock island. One of our favorite parts were the couple of blow holes in the middle of the lava rock. They were so loud. Check out the videos above for a sample. 

 Crashing waves. They made us a little nervous because of all the reviews claiming it was so dangerous. It reality the worst we got was an unexpected wave in the back. Wet clothes, but the camera and phone were fine, thank goodness.

 Big wave leads to...

BIG crash!

All over Hawaii we ran into these little black crabs on the lava rock beaches. They were hard to see because of the black on black, but they were very distinctive because of the loud clatter they made when we got too close. To be honest they were kind of alarming and freaky because you go to sit and and hear this clatter of a couple of black crabs. Yikes!

There is the lighthouse we were hiking up to. 

Ah! We got caught by a wave!

This beautiful pool supposedly gets swam in by people at the tidepools, but we sure couldn't figure out a way to get down.

Then we hiked up to the overlook of the lighthouse. Check out the view of the bay--amazing!

A view from the top with my sweetheart!

This is the view opposite the blue cove. It is a stark contrast between the wet and dry sides of the island. 

The next stop was Lanikai beach--beautiful sand, beautiful water. The only sad part was that we didn't spend more time here snorkeling. Oh, and we couldn't find a place to change into our swimsuits. We ended up doing quick/tricky changes in our car.

It was a little windy, but the water and wet suits made it warm. 

I have the itch to rewrite this. I guess that is what happens when I'm spending so much time on calligraphy practice recently. To give myself some credit though, it is a lot harder to write on sand than paper. 

I was so nervous about the water being too cold to swim in for me, but these wet suits off Amazon saved the day! They made such a difference! We are super excited to use them at Lake Powell, San Diego, really anywhere that isn't Phoenix summer swimming.

Added bonus of being great sun protection. I get sunburned so easily! So not surprisingly I got burned on my face, hands, and feet--the only possible places I could get burned. We also found that there was fun snorkeling here. I wish we had spent more time and swam out farther, but we were just getting used to our gear and had more plans for the day. 

Next stop was the Dole Plantation. Here was John with a super cool looking papaya tree. Then of course, is a grove of banana trees. 

Pineapple fields! I learned it takes about two years from planting the start to harvesting pineapple. I also learned that you can actually plant the leafy top of the pineapple. You start by cutting it off the pineapple and pulling off the bottom few layers/inches of leaves to make more of a stalk. Then you soak it in water for a week or two until you see roots growing that are twice as long as the stalk is tall. Then you plant it in a pot and water it once a week. I don't know if I'll ever try it, but it was kind of fun to learn about.

Beautiful grounds viewed from the Pineapple Express. 

Chocolate trees. They also had coffee trees, but they were far less interesting, obviously.

We're so funny. We also learned about how to pick out a nice pineapple at the store. Look for evenly sized eyes all over the pineapple that are full and firm to the touch. Apparently color doesn't matter, and pineapples don't ripen after picking so don't leave on the counter to ripen.

I loved these evergreen trees. They had the tiniest needles and were so soft to touch. Here is John nice and personal with the cacao tree. We like chocolate!

I was a little bit cold so John let me wear his jacket. I loved these fun signs around. We also saw these fun plants that look just like the agaves at home. They even had the stalk that shot up to be the flower. The other differences were that clearly the leaves were different (retaining less water or something) and the beautiful, rich color.

Look at that banana bunch and blossom. 

We loved wandering around these beautiful gardens. 

Jungle garden!   

After the garden tour we enjoyed a delicious dole whip! I only wish it had been warmer so that ice cream would have been more ideal.

I love all of this brightly colored foliage!

There was a whole hibiscus garden with a variety of the colors and sizes. Since we got home we had to plant hibiscus in our yard. Turns out they are supposed to do okay as long as we keep them out of direct afternoon sunlight and give them enough water. We planted two in our front yard--red and pink. I hope they work out! Not shown--how much work it was to remove the large stump that was residing there before.

I loved these two trees. The huge ones with the painted trunks and the root/trunk trees. Like my super official names for these??

After the Dole Plantation we went on a quick trip over to Walmart and then went on a long drive around the island back to Laie and Kaaawa. Unfortunately a lot of that drive was in the dark and rain. But we did get to stop by the temple and see it all lit up. We then had one of my favorite meals--delicious burgers at Seven Brother's in Laie. Spectacular!