Still raining in Princeville, they get over 300 inches of rain a year and up in the hills some places get 400! Well that is what they told us, and that it is one of the wettest places in the world. That wasn’t in the travel brochure!
This evening we attended our first ever luau, along with 688 other people. But despite the size it was an excellent evening. The pick up was in a small tourist bus and the driver chatted away with his local knowledge and was quite a character.
As we drove through an area in Kīlauea he informed us that the land that we were passing through belongs to Bette Midler who bought 38 acres in 1988 as a gesture to keep the wild areas protected from development.
The approximate population is 70,000 people, with 250,000 wild pigs and around 700,000 chickens on the small island. The chickens are tough and apparently not eaten by local people who buy their chicken from the supermarket. Shame because they could do with eating a few thousand each.
There was a mixed bunch on the bus but mainly middle aged and American. The Luau Kalamaku is a slick operation and we were ushered to a table where our places were saved by the server whilst we had our photo taken. Unfortunately we didn’t venture out of the huge open sided centre as it was pouring. Outside there appeared to be stalls and beautiful gardens and you could pay for a train ride around the plantation.
Drinks were part of the $120 package, but remember that we had a deal where we paid half price because we went and listened to a boring time share promotion earlier in the week. My first drink looked like it was a nice rose (from the look of the bottle), bad move it was like drinking jelly. So I moved to a guava lava cocktail which wasn’t bad but too sweet to stay on for the whole evening. Finally I found a red and settled in. Lance said that the beer was great!
We sat with a group of 8 Canadians who were older than us and apart from one had all gone to the same school as some stage. Three of the men had been firemen together and one of them had played ice hockey for Canada. They were really nice people and we enjoyed our time with them.
The show was very professional and we enjoyed the parallels with our own Maori culture. The buffet meal was interesting but not particularly appetising, however I did enjoy the pork that had been cooked in the imu.
On the bus ride home the driver had clips of movies playing and they all aligned with the places that we were driving through which was great.
We arrived home ready for bed and an early start in the morning for our flight back to Honolulu.
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