Hawaii - Luau

The second awesome tourist package was a Luau!  We got a great deal on this one too (military deal, not Groupon).  The PolynesianCultural Center puts on an Ali’i Luau which is supposed to be the best on the island.  It was an entire day of activities! 

We got all dressed up in our newly purchased Hawaiian garb (how could you go to a luau and NOT be dressed in Hawaiian attire??) and headed up to the luau.  Notice that the day we decided to go just happened to be the one day that it rained on the island.  Ha! 

 Once we got there, we decided to just walk around and explore for a while.  We found a really cool, super long boat.

The day’s activities included visiting the different “islands” and exploring each unique village life.  It was so cool to see all the diverse cultures and traditions for which each are known. 

They started things off with a boat parade that introduced each culture and the activities you would find in each village.

Aotaera

Fiji

Hawaii

 

Once the boat show was over, we made our way over to “Samoa” and watched a hilarious demonstration on cracking a coconut.  This guy was fabulous.

It took him all of 30 seconds to crack open the coconut, scrape out the meat, and make coconut milk.  I was SOOOO impressed!  Last time I was on the island, Teresa and I did the same with some coconuts we found in her yard.  However, it took us about an hour.  This guy is a pro. 

One hit, and the shell was in two even pieces.

Then he scraped out the meat with a little fork-like contraption strapped onto his seat.  The day before Teresa had shown me a bunch of them on display at her work in the Bishop Museum.  It was really cool to see it in action!

Then he showed us how to quickly make a fire with the coconut husk and a piece of wood.

Then he climbed a giant palm tree in about 20 seconds….barefoot.

Our next village stop was “Aotaera”.  They sang and danced, and did a stick throwing jig. 

Then we got to try it out.

I failed miserably at this task.  lol

We did much better at the stick-throwing, but since we were both using both of our hands, we don't have photographic evidence.  You'll just have to believe me. 

Pretty scenic views on the way to our next village.

In “Tonga”, we tried our hand at tolo (underhanded spear-throwing).  Blair was surprisingly and scarily good at it.  His first attempt was smack dab in the middle of the target. Don't make him mad.

I had really good aim, but I couldn’t figure out how to get it far enough to hit the target.  (but I did better than most of the other people there!)

Then we bought hand-made head leis in “Tahiti”.  Blair’s had a really cool fish on top, and mine had beautiful and sweet-smelling plumarias.

Next stop:  dinner and a show.  They gave us leis as we walked in.  :)

Another picture I heart of the two of us!

 Our pig for dinner.  :)

We thought the show at dinner was THE show.  We were wrong.  Afterwards, we were  escorted to a really big auditorium for the after-dinner presentation.  It was called Ha...which we found ironic, because the big show we saw in Vegas was Ka.  :)  We weren’t allowed to take pictures of it though. :(

Then we took a picture with our favourite Samoan Warrior, Te’o Tafiti, who did our demonstration earlier.

One last photo before we left.

Such a FUN experience!!!