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. :)