Aloha from Hawaii - Day 3

Day 3 on our Hawaiian adventure had us going to the Polynesian Cultural Center. This was nice because it doesn't open til later in the day (around noon), so we got to sleep in despite the fact that we had to travel a ways to get to it. Traveling over there was beautiful as the road we went on was RIGHT on the coast for a large part of the way. So pretty!

We ordered the "Ambassador" package for the Polynesian Cultural Center (hereafter known as PCC) which included a tour, a luau and the evening show - Ha Breath of Life. Our group consisted of about 15-20 people led by the wonderful "Cousin" Cathy. She started us out with the Samoan village where we learned how to shuck, open and shave a coconut as well as climb a palm tree. Also I was given a palm leaf woven headband, which was very nice. They said that the palm leaves may turn brown but the shape will stay the same.



After that we went over to the Aotearoa (New Zealand) village where we got ink "tattoos" and my mom and I learned a game to play with sticks and directions. Harder than it sounds. We then learned about how they welcomed in others as friends and other interesting cultural dances and music. Very cool also. Interesting dancing with lots of yelling and tongues and hitting yourself and stuff.

After that we went to watch the different "villages" show off their dancing skills on canoes. They did well. It's not super impressive to me because I'm pretty familiar with all that kind of dancing but one funny thing is that the guy who was steering the Fiji boat fell off because their dancing was shaking it so much (apparently that happens a lot though).

We left early from the canoe show to get seats for the next show in "Tonga" where they did a really fun drum show where they pulled up 3 people from the audience to copy what the leader did one by one. The guys they pulled up for it were perfect for the show and new just how to ham it up. It was Cousin Cathy's favorite show and I can see why. After that one we went to Tahiti and we all learned about the may sets of islands that Tahiti is comprised of and we all learned how to dance. Funny though how some of the women did well at dancing but absolutely none of the men (even the younger ones) looked at all like they were dancing. They were very stiff and it was very funny to watch them.



After that one we had no more time for villages and headed down the river in a canoe over to the luau that we had. That was where Cathy left us for the day. The luau was good. We had one of the front-most tables, which was wonderful. I thought the dancing was very good here as well and I learned that I actually like taro in many different forms. Yum. And the Kalua pork and Chicken and long rice were good too.



After a small trip over to see the Hawaii Laie temple and BYU campus (both of which are very pretty) we didn't have too much time before the night show so we did a little bit of poking around in a shop and then headed in before finding out that we were in the 3rd row!! How cool is that? And to top it off, nobody sat in the second row in front of us! Clear views made for a wonderful time. And the show was amazing. Wonderful dancing, super awesome fire dancers who absolutely floored me with some of the stuff they did. I highly recommend the show. After that we all went home following a caravan of cars to Waikiki.