Hawaii Vacation - Day 3

Tuesday morning we started the day with a hike to Manoa Falls.  As we started the hike, Josh and I were just in awe of all the beautiful plant life!  Vines climbing on everything, moss on all the rocks - it was just SO pretty and peaceful.

Aren't these roots cool?  They kind of acted like a natural staircase.

Here is a picture of Manoa Falls itself.  It was hard to get a good picture of it because you can't really see it until you are right up to it and by then you are too close to get a full shot.  It was pretty though.  It wasn't flowing as fast as it does during the rainy season, supposedly.

 

After our hike we drove up to Kailua and had Korean food for lunch at Kim Chee's.  It was a buffet where we got to try all kinds of Korean foods.  It was pretty good!

After lunch we went to Kailua Beach.  The turquoise waters and white sand was just beautiful.  Josh wanted to go for a swim, and he talked me into coming in too (I'm not a swimmer).  That was my first time going into the ocean! It was fun once you got the hang of moving with the waves.  It surprised me how salty the water actually was.  The water there was warm (about like a swimming pool).  Definitely a cool experience!

After our swim we headed back to our hotel to clean up and rest for a bit.  For dinner we went to a little restaurant that served authentic Hawaiian food.  We got the laulau plates.  This restaurant was said to have the best laulau in town! It came with all of the stuff below!  On the big green plates is the laulau (It's the pork wrapped in taro leaves that I mentioned in a previous post).  It was SO good!  Probably my favorite traditional Hawaiian food.  I swear though, I think I ate more pork in that one week in Hawaii than I have in the past 5 years!!  The red stuff in the pink bowls is Lomi Lomi Salmon.  It is basically a fresh tomato, salmon salad - served cold.  The meat in the little green bowls is called pipikaua.  It's a kind of dried meat - sort of like a more moist jerky. The big pink bowl has poi which is made from pureed taro root.  It is kind of bland, so it is used with the salty meats. It was all served with rice and sliced sweet onions.  The little white cubes are Haupia, the coconut pudding dessert I mentioned before.  It was fun to eat the traditional foods.  

After dinner we walked around Waikiki.  The sunset was really pretty behind these cool trees.

We had to get our pictures by this funny statue. :)

Hawaii Vacation - Day 2

This is part of the view from our hotel room.  If you look at the horizon there, you can see a bit of the ocean.  It was just a short walk away.

 On the second day of our vacation, we drove up the the North Shore.  This is the part where Josh used to live.  It was neat to see the mountains on the drive up.  They were just covered in lush green vegetation.

A popular treat/dessert in Hawaii is called Haupia.  It's pretty much a coconut pudding with a kind of gelatin texture.  It's pretty good!  We even found some haupia flavored yogurt at the grocery store:

We drove along the cost from Waikiki to the North Shore.  Josh lived in a town called Kahuku.  We drove by his old elementary school and his old high school.  This is a picture of the high school.  It is all very open.

We also saw Josh's old church building, then we went to Turtle Bay which is where the condo was where Josh's family lived.

These birds cracked me up.  You would see them all over, and they would just stand there and stare. Haha

This is the ocean at Turtle Bay.

The plumeria flowers were so pretty.  These were my favorites of all that we saw:

Josh's old condo:

After that we went back to town and had lunch at the Kahuku Grill.  They claimed to have the "best coconut-macadamia shrimp in Oahu", so I gave that a try.  They were pretty good!  I think I liked the ones from the other restaurant even more though. :)  Josh had a Teriyaki burger that he said was pretty good too.

 

After lunch we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center in Laie.  We learned about the different cultures of Polynesia: Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Hawaiian, etc.

 In the Samoa section, Josh learned how to start a fire by rubbing two sticks together.  It was hard work!

The guy who did the Samoan presentation started a fire that way,

...and then taught us how to make coconut milk from a fresh coconut with a special tool.

And then we saw a guy climb a coconut tree.  Josh wanted to try it, but they wouldn't let him because he had sandles on and no shoes.

We watched a parade of sorts on the canal that flows through the park.  All of the different groups did a show on top of rafts.

While we watched the show, we had a little treat called mochi ice cream.  It was really interesting.

It's hard to describe, but it was basically a sticky rice, gummy type thing filled with tropical flavored ice cream.  We tried Haupia, Passion Fruit, and Mango.  They were different, but really good.  This is what they look like:

 Some statues.  Not sure why the last guy is missing his hat.

Josh took Ukulele lessons!  He was pretty good at it. :)

Banana tree:

At dinner time we went to their Luau.  They got to watch as they opened a pit where they had been cooking a pig.

Throughout the luau they had different people performing.

This little boy and girl were so cute doing their hula dance.

The luau was fun.  We got to eat a buffet of traditional Hawaiian foods including Kalua pork, Lomi Lomi Salmon, Teriyaki chicken, Taro, purple Okinawan sweet potato, Poke (this was my favorite!), Chicken Long rice (kind of like glass noodles), and Poi.  They had tropical style desserts too, including Haupia, Coconut cake, passion fruit bread pudding, etc.  It was a fun experience!