Hawaii

December 23, 2010 Thursday Nawilliwili, Kaua'i. Nawillwili is the port and Kaua'i is the island. This is the purple island. Each island has it's own color. This morning we got on a shuttle bus at the pier to go to the Wailau River and Fern Grotto excursion. The bus driver 'Damian' learned everybody's name and where they were from. He used their names a lot. He reminded me of Brad in that aspect. We drove and took a big barge up the river to the fern grotto. Along the way we had Hawaiian musicians and dancers perform for us. They asked for any requests and I said the haukilau. We saw the beautiful fern and bamboo forest. We walked up a short path to the grotto. When we got there, the musicians sang the wedding song for us. They say it is a tradition for people to come to this place and get married, because it is so beautiful. On the bus ride back we stopped at a beautiful waterfall and our bus driver told us about the trees and animals we passed. We saw mango, kukui nut trees, papaya, guava and macadamia. When we got to the ship we lay down for a rest.

This evening we went to a Luaukalamaka. We went by bus. Only 650 people from our cruise ship went. It was a huge open air building. We got to see lots of different hula dances and some really cool fire dancers. The food was good. The pork tasted ok. The poi was purple paste made out of taro tasted yuck, mostly tasteless and bland. Kinda like wallpaper paste, potato salad, rolls chicken, salad, banana cream pie and rice pudding. We met a man, his mom and daughter at our table that are from Old Mesilla--crazy huh?

I learned that all Hawaiian words end in a vowel Some of the words I've learned are:

Aloha- hello, goodbye, and I love you

Mahalo-thank you

wahine-woman

kane-man

We got back to our stateroom and went straight to bed.