Turtle Beach

This beach is called turtle beach because, for whatever reason, sea turtles like to come up on this beach to rest.

Sunset beach.

Laie Temple

Unfortunately it's under construction, so we can't do a session, but it's pretty to look at. We went to look at it and see the visitor's center on Sunday night.

These pretty flowers were all along the walk up to the temple.

The Polynesian Cultural Center

To give BYU Hawaii students jobs, the Church built this place back in the 60's called the Polynesian Cultural Center. Within the center is seven different "villages" which each represent a Pacific island and culture, such as Tonga, Somoa, Hawaii, Tahiti, and others. Each village has different buildings, boats, and other things you can find specific to that culture.

This river runs through the whole center, and they put on a show on it in the middle of the day.

I think this was a game in the village of Hawaii.

A pacific island equivalent of mashed potatoes. It didn't have much flavor.

Workers at each village put on a cultural show several times a day. This one was in the Tongan village. They invited audience members who had to repeat what they did, including yelling, stomping, hand motions, and drumming. It was really entertaining.

Here is a Hawaiin canoe that BYU and community members built a few decades ago. It is huge and awesome, it can hold up to 20 crew members.

Here's the midday show on the river. A boat came out representing each island culture and they did dances of the culture.

This was my favorite presentation, mostly because of all the booty shakin. I don't remember which culture it represented. But you should check out the video.

For dinner there was a luau, where they fed us..

pork! Amy, does this bring back memories of the mish? They have a real cooking pit where they show how an animal would be buried while wrapped in banana leaves and slow cooked.


Then, at about 7:30 they put on a show in a giant amphitheater. It's mostly dancing, and some fire tricks which were pretty cool.

You can buy this ice cream dish that has fruit on the bottom with pina colada flavored ice cream. Mmm it's so good. Mike had this one by himself, plus half of one earlier in the day.

My husband is such a freak.

Check out the view

This is a stop off the highway that gives a view from the mountains. I love the mountains here - they are so green and steep and luscious. Yes, I just called the mountains luscious. I'll take them over the mountains in Utah anyday.

These wild chickens are all over the island. Gladys dreads them...normally they sabotage her sleep by sqawking outside her window at night. We haven't had any problems this trip so far...




This is the opening to a highway going through the mountains. It looks like the temple of doom or something.

Waikiki

Hawaii is really beautiful, of course. This is Waikiki beach. We went to the swap meet last Wednesday morning with the other Bready's and then drove to Waikiki to eat at Burgers in Paradise. Last Monday we came back and swam here.

This swim area is a cool place to watch the waves crash against this wall. You can barely see it in the picture, but at the very right, there is an area that allows water to come in and out of the swim area. People would wait for the water to get sucked in and out of the hole and would hang on to rocks underwater while the water rushed in and out around them until they couldn't hold on anymore.

Burgers in Paradise was delicious, but the one thing i didn't like was the birds walking around the restaurant. The restaurant was open to the street without any walls, so I could understand that they couldn't keep them out, but it was pretty gross. So unsanitary...

If you click this picture you can see the bird that is actually up on the table, in the basket, eating leftover food. Gross.

Monday

We spent Monday at a few beaches. It was heaven.



The other Breadys.



Mike and Thomas decided to bury Jake.



See the big rock back there? It's really fun to jump off of. I went snorkeling around the rocks behind it and saw a sea turtle!


Dolphins! A few people went out and swam with them until the lifeguard said we couldn't.


In between beaches, Michael taught Thomas how to catch lizards by lassoing them with a reed.