Snorkel and Luau, Sept 27, 2012

Today we went snorkeling.  It was my first time ever and I was a little nervous.  We went to Polo Beach and walked out into the surf.  We'd managed to find snorkel masks that had corrective lenses, so we were set for a good session.  We pulled on our masks and flippers and floated out.  The idea is to just stick your face into the water and look down, but whenever I felt the water over my mouth and tried to force myself to breathe I would panic.  I knew my mouth was under water and if I breathed in I would fill my lungs with salty sea-water.  I contemplated calling it quits and just hitting the beach with my Bill Bryson travel book, but I wanted to push through.  'I am in a glass bubble filled with air,' I told myself, and put my face down and forced myself to breathe through my mouth.  And I finally got it.  I could breathe with my face in the water!  And I could see!  Unfortunately, all there was to see at that particular spot was sandy water.  We found one place where there were some rocks and little fishes, but it was pretty small.  There were black lava rocks on either side of the beach, but I was nervous to head over there because of the surf.  The waves were pretty strong and I could just imagine being dashed into sharp unfriendly black rocks while trying to look at the fish through my prescription goggles. Kip wanted to play in the waves, but I get dizzy from the up and down of it all, so I headed to the beach.  It was a hotel beach with hotel-owned lounge chairs that I technically couldn't use.  I didn't feel too restrained.  I found a vacant lounger and asked the lady next to it if I could sit there.  She was fine with it.  Plus, our white beach towels almost matched the hotel-issue ones the residents all had.  I didn't feel too conspicuous.  I got some good reading done and Kip tried to perfect the art of body-surfing without a board.  He did pretty well--maybe it helps to have a long body.

Tonight, we had our luau at the Grand Wailea.  We got there a little late, but had reserved front seating and were in the second row at the front of the table.  It wasn't bad.  Our table had a couple from Vancouver BC, Seattle, Brazil, and a mom and daughter from here.  Everyone was very friendly.  I think when you visit, you must temporarily adopt the Hawaiian friendliness.  We all introduced ourselves and talked about why we were here. We took pictures for each other.  It was fun. The food was pretty good, but after finishing the buffet, I was hit with a migraine.  Was there something in the food?  It just seemed odd to hit so fast after a pretty relaxing day.  I took excedrine and watched the show.

I thought the show was pretty good.  The dancers are so smooth.  Their hips and feet move and their upper bodies stay almost motionless.  It looks pretty cool.

There was a rain goddess who did a dance on ribbons.  I'm not sure that's traditionally Hawaiian.  But it was very neat.

The best of course was the fire dancer at the end of the show.  He was amazing, throwing his fire stick all around.

Although the boy dancers doing the sit-on-fire dance were pretty funny, if not quite as impressive.

We ended the night with a group photo for Casey, the local girl there with her mom.  Kip and I get to email it to her because her phone camera didn't do a good job of it, so we took it with our camera.  I guess we made a friend in Maui!