Luau!

One of the main things that I told Colleen we HAD to do in Hawaii was go to a Luau.  The first full day on the island Luau was on our schedule.  I don't remember what time we had to be there, but it was later so we decided to head to the beach first.

Ryan Oakes, Guidebook King, had read about Hideaway Beach and it was walking distance from us.  Like just across the street, and down some crazy ropes...

(photo from http://letsgokauai.com/beaches)

It was a steep hike, but well worth it.  It was a beautiful beach, perfect for snorkeling.  We only had 3 snorkeling sets, so Ryan and Colleen went out and about all day and the hubs and I shared the third set.  They were way more into it than we were.  After a few hours at the beach we headed back to the condo.  The hike up wasn't as terrible as I was anticipating it to be.

We headed to the Smith Family Garden Luau  The gardens were quite awesome.  However, I don't have as many pictures as I would have liked because I'm a big dork!  I took my battery out of my nice camera to charge it up and left it on the charger at the condo.  I had my small camera with me, but I had forgot the charger for that camera in Colorado, AND because I used my phone to navigate it was nearly dead.  So trying to conserve the battery on the phone and small camera, here are some of the pictures I did get.

Entrance

 Upon arriving we were escorted to a train which took us all around the gardens and the lady on the train told us about each area.  It was pretty neat.  We also learned that it was mating season in the gardens...

On the Train

Ryan by the pond in the Japanese Garden...I think

I wanted to take a cute picture of Ryan and I so I found a tree that looked neat.  Here's what happened next..

Photo bombed by BOTH RYANS!  Apparently no one else thought the tree would be a neat place for a photo... but I did get get a few decent pictures (before the camera died)

The Luau included pulling the pig out of the pit, eating yummy food (though I could do without poi...I'll stick with mashed potatoes thankyouverymuch!).  I tried to take some pictures of them pulling the pig out, but my little camera can't keep up with movement like my big camera can. :(

My small camera can also not handle taking pictures of dancing Hawaiians in the dark...so I have no pictures of the dancing. Boo!

We enjoyed the Luau, but I think we all agreed that the dancing/hula part was about 30 minutes too long.  An hour is a long time to sit after eating and near the end of the night.  And, as Mr. Smith told us (and Ryan G. reminded us frequently) Hawaiians don't eat get full, they eat to sleep, we were tired.