March 15, 2012

A chartreuse and orange fish darts across my view. Another has a bright yellow paintbrush tail. Sarah sees an eel, and Garrett watches an octopus scoot under a rock. We followed a school of yellow and black striped fish. Snorkeling is fine at Pali Ke Kua reef. We tried it at Poipu Beach, too.
Edison and Jasper have new floaty inner tubes, and they spin in the water and roll them across the lawn. They took them into the keiki pond at Poipu Beach, into cousin Bill and Vicki’s Poipu Shores pool, and let the wind blow them across our Pali Ke Kua pool.
At the top of the Waimea Canyon we all started along a trail that reminded me of the lower half of a lava tube. The rocks were flecked with mica or red mineral. It was a flowing path seemingly at the top of the world. We could see the beautiful Na Pali Coast glittering in the sun, then mist rolled in and a rainbow arched. Jasper and Edison gathered sticks with me to make a “bridge” over a muddy spot. Jasper was singing, “Skippety doo dah,” making people smile.
Edison was laughing and shrieking as the waves rolled in on him, and I was taken by surprise by a big roller, falling hilariously upside down. We walk to our beach down a steep paved path. Along are dark purple banana blooms – each petal peels back and bananas are underneath. One day I picked up a guava along the path, so we had a taste of that fruit. On the beach are the black ‘a’a rocks and then flat slabs of rock that look like mud solidified with sand.
“Date Night” found Garrett and Sarah visiting a dry cave (yellow-taped off because men were removing trees from a cliff above) and sharing a gourmet dinner at Postcards Café. Les and I took the boys to a playground and a botanical garden miniature golf. It was their first golf game. We did ten holes. Eddie’s favorite was one where you hit the ball over a creek. Afterwards we tried a taro burger.
The Smith Family Luau greeted us with shell leis. Peacocks crowded near the train cart that took us through a beautiful garden setting. At the luau site, the peacocks were shivering their feathers quite aggressively. We heard the couch shells sound, and the sand was removed from the top of the imu. Underneath was a banana leaf mat covering the roasted pig. Hot rocks and more leaves were removed, and the meat was lifted out. The Smiths also cooked rice pudding underground. The fire under there heats lava rocks. The sand on top is the oven cover.
The feast began with a guitar and ukulele band playing, a prayer, and plenty of mai tais. The Smiths can feed hundreds of people in a short time with a huge spread of everything from salads to poi to pulled pork and chicken adobo to coconut jello and cake.
Quite delicious!
Following the dinner, we walked by torchlight to a stage set in a pond with a volcano as backdrop. Pele actually emerged from this fiery volcano. Dances representing all the Oceania cultures plus the Asian cultures that make up Hawaii were performed. The Samoan fire dancer actually lit the second end of his torch with his mouth! ???