Today was a long day, but filled with lots of fun at the Polynesian Cultural Center. The shuttle bus pickup was scheduled for 10:40 am. We were on time and on board and waited, and waited, and waited for three late arrivals who finally showed up at 11:00 am. The drive took about an hour and the further north we went, the cloudier it got. It even rained a little. 
Fortunately, by the time we arrived, the rain had stopped and the sun was out! Yeah.
The Polynesian Cultural Center is a nonprofit organization dedicated to preserving the cultural heritage, arts, and traditions of Polynesia. Since it was founded sixty years ago, it has provided financial assistance to close to 30,000 students while they attend Brigham Young University-Hawaii. Many of the employees are students from the university.
After going through the Covid check-in protocols, we took the Island Canoe tour to the North Landing. The grounds are beautiful and filled with flowers.
We stopped to see the Iosepa Canoe first. 
This double-hulled canoe was given as a gift to BYU–Hawaii’s Jonathan Napela Center for Pacific Island Studies in 2001. Iosepa has been used to sail the islands of Hawaii teaching students how to navigate and sail as the ancient Hawaiians did. Ancient sailors traveled 2400 miles in this type of canoe to the Hawaiian islands!
We spent the afternoon visiting the different islands of the center and watched their different programs.
Tahiti
In the Tonga Village, audience “volunteers” came up and learned how to drum and dance. It was pretty funny.
In Hawaii, hula was demonstrated.
Fiji
In Samoa they demonstrated fire starting using coconut husks, then we got to see one of the guys climb the coconut tree.
Aotearoa
We went back and walked through most of the villages after seeing the shows and had a chance to see some of the other demonstrations going on. We even got our pictures taken with the fellows from Tonga – real jokesters!
I always love when I see colorful birds when I travel and this little guy was great.
Included in our tour was a buffet dinner. It was fun trying several of the different foods, but we weren’t crazy about all of them. The dining room was huge – this is just half of it!
After dinner we attended the evening show, “HA: the breath of life.” The show has over 100 Polynesian natives telling the story of birth and death, love and family (and all the parts in-between) with dance, music, and some pretty cool special effects. We also liked the fire knives! No photography is allowed during the show so you will have to plan your own visit to see the amazing show!
After the show we bid aloha to the PCC and it was back to the bus for our ride to “wacky-wacky” as our driver called it!
The rain started again as we were boarding so we thank the Heavens for waiting until our day was over. We made it home around 10:30, tired, but appreciating our great day out.
1 comment:
I wish I could be there with you. I remember the last time we were there.
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