Day 4 of Mom & Dave's Visit to Hawaii

Day 4 took us to the Dole Plantation during the morning time, and then to the Polynesian Cultural Center for the whole afternoon and night!

I happen to live right next to the Dole Plantation so we buzzed in there for a tour around the gift shop and we decided from there to take the train ride around the fields. It's a 20-25 minute ride going about 8mph thru the pineapple fields, while a narrated tour tells you a LOT of information about pineapples. LOL I did learn a lot, most of which was pretty interesting!

Here are a few pineapple plants with baby fruits on them...

The Polynesian Cultural Center is a HUGE, fantastic place to visit!! It's unbelievable how sprawling the place is, and it's all gorgeous and so well run.

There are different package deals that you can buy to get in and do various things around the park. Mom and Dave got us in on a big fancy package deal that gave us a guide to take us around the place so that we could do as much as possible. It also included the IMAX movie, the luau and premium seats for the night show, "Horizons".

The first thing we got to see was the parade of canoes. Each set of Polynesian islands was represented by a canoe with people from that area... dressed appropriately and playing/singing music. The represented island groups were: Hawaii, Marquesas, Fiji, Aotearoa, Tahiti, Samoa and Tonga.

Our next stop was to visit "Samoa", and the guy who was our entertainment was really funny! A Samoan with a sense of humor! Who knew?! Here he is:

We were then treated to a canoe ride ourselves. Our tour guide did the poleing, and we sat back and relaxed.

After our canoe ride we went to the IMAX movie that was about the Coral Reefs thruout the South Pacific.

Directly after the movie we had to go for the luau seating. We were all given orchid leis that smelled so nice!!

Once we were seated, the folks that ran the luau thought we'd like to see how the kalua pig was roasted...

Our dinner entertainment... music and hula.

The menu for this Ali'i Luau, or "Royal Feast" was:

Chicken Long Rice, Kalua Pig, Teriyaki Chicken, Island Fish, Poke (marinated fish), Lomilomi Salmon and Pipi Kaula (seasoned beef). Lots of sides and desserts as well.

After dinner there was time for shopping and wandering around before the night show began at 7:30pm.