The Barri (more than one Barrus): Hawaii for Spring Break, Day 6

Ahhh! Our trip is going to fast! We're having so much fun and we only have one day left. We're definitely going to have to come again next year for spring break. It's just been so fantastic.

This morning we headed off to Laie to spend the afternoon at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We'd heard this was a must, and although neither Kent nor I are really huge fans of Polynesian culture, we were told the kids would love it. So off we went.

When we went down to the car, Brandt picked up Blythe's seat to move it to the other side of the car and let out an ear-piercing scream. It was amazingly high pitched and loud. Under the seat he discovered a very large, fortunately very dead cockroach. Gross. So, so gross. We've actually seen roaches in the car pretty much every day, but they have been small and disappeared quickly. Still, it was a bit creepy to know they were there. And then to find this big one. Ick! Neither of the kids wanted to get back in the car, and really, I didn't blame them too much. *Side note: when I returned the car and mentioned the cockroaches, the woman at the car rental place said, "You could have brought it back and gotten a different car." Who knew? She did give me a $50 discount for the bugs, which was appreciated.

Big dead (fortunately) bug

We put the directions to get to Laie into the phone, and started off. Brenda said it was super easy. You get on Like Like (pronounced lee-kee lee-kee) Highway, go through the tunnel, make a left hand turn, and you'll run right into it. Somehow, we missed the left and got lost. I was driving and Kent was supposed to be navigating, but he wasn't following the instructions very well, and I couldn't really tell where we were, and when he asked me to stop and look where we were, it seemed like we were on the right path. We weren't. We ended up at the Marine Corps Base looking very foolish. So we refigured a route from where we were, but even then, we didn't make the correct turn and ended up going the long way around. Fortunately, we weren't in a hurry, the drive was beautiful, and Kent didn't seem too, too irritated with me (just a little irritated).

As we approached Laie, the Hawaii rain we had been hoping for began to fall. Funny thing about Hawaii rain--when it falls, it really falls. And in our experience, it just keeps on falling. It began to rain about 11:00am, and it didn't really let up until 5:30 when we were all done at the PCC and were ready to head home. It rained all day long.

I was tasked with buying a BYU Hawaii pennant for a friend, so we stopped on campus and wandered around, going into the bookstore and buying lunch at the school cafeteria. The kids were able to choose what they wanted to eat so we weren't trying to force them to eat something they weren't thrilled with. We made a stop over at the temple and wandered around, but it was still sort of raining, so we didn't stay long there. We headed to the PCC hoping the rain would abate.

It didn't. We wandered around from island area to island area, eventually caving in and buying rain ponchos, just so our clothes wouldn't end up plastered to us. There really are lots of activities in the PCC, and we did some. We played a stick game, tried to make fire with a piece of coconut wood, wove leaves into fish, tried to catch a fish, got a paint tattoo, drank coconut milk right out of a coconut, and saw four different shows to learn about four different cultures. We saw the haka in New Zealand, learned all about the usefulness of the coconut tree in Samoa, did some dancing ourselves at Tahiti, and were highly entertained by drummers at Tonga. The kids talked and giggled about the drumming at Tonga for a long time.

A drummer did a demonstration, then called three men out of the audience to help him. They were to watch and listen to him drum, then repeat his actions. One guy was from Germany, the second was a big Black guy from Tennessee, and the third was a man from Japan who spoke no English. They were very funny, the guy from Tennessee stealing the show at one point having us all sing "Who Let the Dogs Out." But really, the very funniest was the Japanese man who didn't really understand what was going on and was unfamiliar with "shave and a haircut, two bits." The Tongan drummed out the "shave and a haircut" part, and the Japanese man was supposed to drum "two bits." But because he didn't understand, the kept doing the same thing the Tongan was doing, even after repeated attempts at an explanation. It was all very funny and the Japanese man seemed a good sport. We really laughed about that.

We watched a movie (out of the rain) and a half-hour canoe pageant outside in the absolute pouring rain. I think it was raining the very hardest as we sat along the banks of a river while young adults performed beautiful dances from their native countries. I just kept laughing at how ridiculous everyone looked, sitting around in the rain in ponchos watching the performance, and how unaffected the performers seemed to be by the rain. They smiled and smiled and we huddled and huddled. It was really silly. We were not able to see the Samoans climb the coconut trees because the tree trunks were too wet, and we didn't get to have a canoe ride because of the rain, but otherwise, we had a great time.

Everyone suggested that we stay for the luau and evening show, "Ha: Breath of Life." They have a roast pig and fire dancers and everyone said it would be fabulous. However, Kent and I both felt that our kids would be done after spending the day wandering around, and that by the time the evening show ended (at 9:00), they would be exhausted and miserable. We were also staying over an hour away, and it didn't seem worth the time or money (it would have cost me and Kent $105 each, and the kids $84 each!). So, we visited islands and then left at 5:30 as things were winding down and as the rain was letting up. We stopped at Keneke's for dinner on the way home and had coconut shrimp and BLTs, plus a shaved ice. And because we knew where we were going, we were much quicker getting home than we had been going. All in all, a good, though wet, day.