Surfin' U.S.A.

Lots of fun and excitement on Oahu's famed North Shore! John and I had surfing lessons today! We went surfing in Puaena Point, which is located in Haleiwa. To get there, we had to drive past the Dole Pineapple plantation. And we saw fields of pineapple plants! As far as the eye could see. It was like corn is in Iowa, except it was hilly. But vast fields full of pineapple plants. A pineapple plant basically looks like a big green spiny sea urchin with a pineapple growing out of the top of it.

The corner of the cove we were in was pretty quiet with some gentle waves. Just across the cove from where we were surfing, there was a big surfing competition going on with bigger waves, though they weren't as big as the surfers would have liked. Apparently, when they have surfing competitions, they have a 10 day window to wait for good waves, but if you get to the end of the waiting period, you have to start whether the waves are there or not. Here's a picture of us paddling out for the first time. That's John in the red swim shorts, and I'm in black shorts and our instructor is in the white shirt. That black thing is a log. This is the only picture we have because we were out surfing, not taking pictures. Our instructor's girlfriend stuck around long enough to take this picture for us.

When we first met up with our instructor, J.D., he pulled into the parking lot with three surfboards tied onto and old beat up four door Nissan with a dog in the back seat and a blonde surfer girl in the front. He had shaggy blonde hair and wasn't wearing any shoes. Just about every stereotype of a "surfer dude" you could think of. J.D. is from San Diego, and he came to Hawaii to go to school at the University of Hawaii, and then just stayed. As we were unloading the surfboards, we found out he had forgotten the rash guard shirts, and with my serious sunburn (it's still bad and painful) I asked if we could please get them, so we waited while his girlfriend went back to get them. While we were waiting, we hauled the surfboards down to the beach and he gave us the basics on getting on, getting out, and getting up. We watched other surfers getting up and saw a whole bunch of sea turtle heads popping up out of the water. That's right, we were surfing with the sea turtles today! Neither of us saw a turtle after we got out in the water, but then we were pretty busy and I wasn't spending much time looking.

We paddled out and took turns with J.D. helping us catch the waves, then we would paddle around in a wide circle to avoid the other surfers and went back out again. John and I both got up a number of times, and I managed to run aground on some rocks at one point, and managed to get off without getting killed (it's hard when you don't really know how to steer the thing).

Unfortunately, I also got seasick after a while. It got to a point that I was scared I would start throwing up, so I had one more run and then "limped" back to the beach and just sat there trying not to be too disappointed. I did see a little transparent crab. That was pretty cool. he stuck around long enough to let me take his picture.

John and J.D. stayed out a while longer, and then the waves died down and there just wasn't anything to surf on so they came in. Here we are with J.D. afterwards.

We had fun, but surfing is harder than it looks. There is a lot of paddling, a lot of sitting and waiting, but it's really exciting when you get up on the board and the wave is pushing you, and it's almost like flying. And then you fall off. Or, if you're lucky, you can sit back down, which I managed to do a time or two.

After we hauled the boards back up to the parking lot, John and I rinsed off in the beach showers and changed clothes and headed back over the top of the island to go back to the Polynesian Cultural Center. We didn't get to see everything we wanted to, so we had to go back!

We saw the presentations in the villages we had missed last time, which were the Fiji, Tahiti and Hawaii villages. We really enjoyed all of them. In Fiji, I was pulled up to dance with the performers, which was so much fun. Here's a picture of me with some of the performers after the presentation.

Here's John with another of the performers.

In Hawaii, we took ukulele lessons and hula lessons and attended the cultural presentation, which was put on by the same guy who was the M.C. at the luau we attended. His daughter was the only native Hawaiian on the gold-medal-winning US Women's soccer team in the 2008 Olympics. He talked about her and he's very proud of her (who wouldn't be?) Anyway, he's a very talented musician. Cousin Benny. He's been at the PCC for something like 30 years. Here's John in the ukulele lesson.

And here he is in his hula lesson! The lady in the dress is the instructor, and the guy in the blue shirt is the tour guide/translator for the Japanese tour group there. There are a LOT of Japanese tour groups in Hawaii. The Japanese people sure do like to travel.

After this we went to Tahiti, and I took a Tahitian dance lesson. Tahitian dancing is the fast hip-shaking dancing--not hula dancing, which is slower and more story driven. John took a video, but no still pictures (you know how cameras are--either one or the other but not both at the same time). We also attended the cultural presentation on Tahiti. After the end of that, we rushed over to get Maori tribal tattoos before they closed up their village. We caught the flag lowering ceremonies for both Tahiti and Aotearoa (Maori). It always throws me off when all the villagers have polynesian accents when they speak, but the Maori village is full of New Zealand accents! 'Cause, you know, they're from New Zealand.

We learned a little about the Christian missionaries who came to the islands, and then headed over to the IMAX theater to watch the show on Fiji's dying coral reefs. So sad. But a really interesting show.

Well, our time here is ending, and we'll be leaving the resort tomorrow afternoon. We can use the resort facilities all day on the day of check out. They have a locker room with showers and they'll store your luggage for you, so you can hang around and have fun even though you have to check out of your room. We still have lots of fun things left to do before we go home, so stay tuned!