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.