We slept in a bit after the wedding, and got up in time to meet back at “the estate” to partake in an ice cream birthday celebration for Julie.  After a quick sundae, we headed out to take in some snorkeling up on the north shore.  Unfortunately, the weather had been a bit nasty in the last 24 hours, which by Hawaiian standards means windy and slightly more chance of rain in between the primarily sunny days.  This had churned up the water where we went snorkeling, near Turtle Bay resort.  While clearly it was a good spot with lots of fish to see, I had a hard time seeing through the stirred-up sandy water.  Jodie however saw quite a bit somehow.  I don’t have any pictures from this snorkeling trip, but it does give me an excuse to share some Turtle Bay pictures that I took earlier in the week when we visited for dinner.

We then packed up the gear and headed into the Polynesian Cultural Center to meet the gang for a Luau.  We lined up for dinner, and each got lei’ed on the way in.  The lauau was a bit more “cafeteria style” than we had hoped, but we had been pre-warned by Geoff and Sarah who had gone earlier in the week.   They went through some of the history of the luaua, and pulled a pig out of the sand pit, but the rest of it was basically a buffet with some people dancing on stage.  I did get a fix of some local food finally, including luau pork, poi, taro bread, and other items.

After dinner was the night show, which did a song and dance to cover each of the polynesian islands.  It was pretty well done, and got better near the end.  I was somewhat surprised to see New Zealand included in the same breath as Hawaii, as I see New Zealand as mostly an extension of Australia.  Goes to show that I’m not as worldly as I thought; perhaps a trip to Australia and NZ is in order.  A memorable part of the show was the crazy vigilance of the ushers to keep people from using flash photography.  I found the ushers far more annoying than the flashes, as every time someone’s flash accidentally went off they would all chase that person down with flashlights.  And they held up these annoying flashing signs that read “No Flash”.  Ironic.