DAY 3, Dec 8th: Wow, what a busy day! We got up about 7:30 – still on Louisiana time – had our morning cups of Kona Coffee and a light breakfast and were on the road by 9:30 am. We took a slow leisurely drive up to the Polynesian Cultural Center and made a few pit-stops along the way.

Our first stop was at the historic Haleiwa Town & Market area. It was a cute little shopping town where we bought a small hand-blown glass Hammerhead Shark to remind us of the feeding frenzy at the resort. We then continued on and made stops at Haleiwa Alii Beach Park, Waimea Bay, Pupukea Beach Park, Sunset Beach, Ehukai Beach Park, Banzai Pipeline (didn’t get out - national surfing championship was taking place) and eventually the town of Laie & the PCC.

The Beach Tour: After Haleiwa, our second stop at the world famous Waimea Bay Beach where John took pictures while Christy walked along the water. The sounds were mesmerizing! Our fourth stop was at Sunset Beach and the water was a wonderful mix of blue and green. Christy had to outrun one crashing wave and ended up with water and sand all the way up to her thighs. Ever so vigilant, John laughed and took pictures.

We finally made it to the PCC about 11:30 (after taking pictures with some really big tiki’s in front of Bringham Young University) and now the experience really begins! Our first village/show turned out to be one of the favorite of the days. It was the island of Samoa, and the guy there (Kape’) was great! As Christy noted, he had a great body, very funny, engaging personality and most of all a wonderful showman. Our next stop was at the New Zealand village. Their singing was so vibrant – it was loud and melodic at the same time! We watched them spin plastic balls on long yarn tails (Poi). After the show we both took our turns the chieftain length balls and it was worth a few good laughs. Christy has more finesse technique while John actually has more hand eye coordination. Christy can do the “butterfly” well while managed to do the “helicopter”. Christy did manage to hit herself right in the forehead… thanks goodness they were soft!

After that we skipped over Fiji briefly and found seats for the water canoe pageant. The pageant was beautiful! Each village performed on a canoe as it glided by. Each canoe also had their own gondolier, who generally tried to remain invisible and allow all of the focus to be on the performers. One of them though actually fell off and ended up stealing the show.

Next was the drumming in the village of Tonga. Although the performance was great the best part was the Japanese tourist pulled from the crowd. A born ham!

Our next stop was Ukulele school for John where he made a new friend in teacher Cousin Benny. Our final village experience was a canoe through all of them. It was now finally time for the luau! Smoked Kaluah Pig, raw fish and lots of purple Tarot plant dishes! The purple sweet bread was delicious! We ate until our bellies were full (John made 2 trips to the buffet) and enjoyed the luau show (hosted by Cousin Benny) and after that we did a little shopping in the market area where we again ran into Kape’ and Benny. Got some nice souvenir pictures and then it was on to Horizons! The show itself was spectacular! Lots of drumming, music, fire, singing and dancing – the only distraction was the idiots with the flash camera’s (“No Flash Please!”) We loved the show so much we bought the DVD! It took about an hour to drive back to the resort… we stopped again at Sunset Beach to listen to the waves at night – a beautiful ending to a picture perfect day.

http://s194.photobucket.com/albums/z...emanvx/HAWAII/