Hawaii trip – 2

Continued…

Lu’au

After buying and wearing some colorful flowery clothes, we went to the beach at the backside of our hotel to attend Lu’au.

It is a Hawaiian festival where they cook a pig on Taro leaves (called Poi) in an oven. Since we are vegetarian, we did not try this dish. They put garlands of shells on us when we entered. But there were other interesting things, like drinks, learning Hula dance from the experts, making a fish out of coconut leaves, temporary tattoo which we both got done. I got a turtle while hubby got himself a dolphin. After that it was time for dinner which had not even a single vegetarian dish, except for salads and desserts. After requesting, they made a customized pasta for us with no meat. While having dinner, we had a person sing some Hawaiian style songs along with a band. Then people came in dressed as King, Queen and other royal members. Hula dance was performed in front of the king. After that, we saw traditional dances from various Polynesian countries like New Zealand, Tahiti, Fiji, Samoa etc. They were all very interesting. I loved them so much that I even got a DVD to watch these dances at home 🙂 There were songs dedicated to veterans too. The final song of the night, which was a Hawaiian wedding song was dedicated to all the couples and everyone was made to dance for that song. When the song was about to end, we saw fireworks on the beach since it was July 4th (Independence Day). It looked so amazing. Overall, a very memorable night.

Tropical Dream Icecream

This Icecream came highly recommended, so I had to try it. We took a chocolate coconut macadamia nut flavoured ice cream and it was too good. A unique flavor which you don’t get anywhere else. Hawaii has huge farms of Macadamia nut and we tried every possible dish we could try using Macadamia nut. It tastes and looks like ground nut. Discovery Antiques is a great shop to have this icecream. We also tried Taro chips in Volcano house, which tasted a bit like potato chips. We had macadamia nut coconut banana pancakes at our hotel and even they were good. Also we drank fresh cocount water in Hilo, Hawaii which is rear to find in US.

Southern most point

I made a wrong decision to visit this place and it wasted a lot of our time. We had to take a lot of detour to reach this place. It is the southern most point in USA. It seems this place has the cleanest air you can find, since the air that left Alaska reaches here without touching any other place in between. What was interesting was that we saw folks diving into the water from such a high point on the hill. I had never seen someone dive like that so we stood for sometime seeing them jump into the water and then climb back up. We spent some time at a cove, which used to get filled with water and then the water would drain from that cove. It reminded me of Enid Blyton’s books (Famous five and Kirrin Island). I wanted to spend more time here but time was short.

 

Black Sand beach

We went to Punalu’u beach with a hope that we would be able to see turtles, but there were none. The beach is really good and when we went, it was crowded. Played in the black sand and in the water for sometime and left the place. Worth visiting, since this is the only black sand beach in the whole island which is easily accessible.

Updated the picture that actually shows black sand 😀

To be continued…

Other posts on Hawaii:

• Hawaii Trip – 1
• Hawaii Trip – 3
• Hawaii Trip – 4