Lazy Day 7-29-11

So we kinda slept in today. We started off the day by attending a seminar hosted by our hotel letting us know how to get around the island and many of the main attractions. It was very informational and it sounded expensive! Luxury cataraman with leather seats, helicopter rides, a huge sugar cane plantation train tours, scuba diving, kayak-ing, and a fire show luau. So we decided to attend the luau tonight at Luau Kalamaku at the Kilohauna Plantation in Kauai Hawaii. But we had the rest of the day to enjoy untill the buffet that night. So we decided to try out our new snorkle gear in front of our hotel at the Poipu Beach. We did not bring our waterproof camera becaue we did not know what to expect from the water and just wanted to get use to the snorkle gear. After some convincing from Jed, and some courage from me, I finally braved the rocks and Jed helped me out in the water! After swallowing a few gulps of VERY SALTY sea water, I got the hang of it. Jed, luckily, is natual in the water. And I am sooo glad we went out! There was actually a snorkle tour right next to us looking at the same fish! Rainbow fish! Dora fish! Scarfish fish! Nemo fish! Schools of fish! The blue boxfish  fish was so pretty! Iy had a bright blue under belly, and kinda spotted and dark on top. Jed kept trying to scare the whitespotted puffer gish to get it to puff up! Didn't work though. The spectacled parrotfish was HUGE and it had a bird beak mouth! It was very timid though. Then we saw these two oval butterfly fish that swam together and kinda followd us for awhile, Jed and I thought it was sweet, grasped hands, and swam together the rest of the time. The ornante wrasser was raindow and very vivid! Beautiful. I promise to take pics tomorrow when we go! Then we headed to the local farmers market and shared fish tacos with tropical salsa, a hot dog with chili and cole slaw, and a macadamiam nut ice cream!

We then decided to check out the National Tropical Botanical Gardens, and it was really fun walking around looking at the cool flowers. While I was taking a picture of a beautiful flower in a tree, I started to walk away after I took the picture, ran into the tree with my head then instantly ran into a short light post in the ground and scrapped my shin. I am clumsy, so it didn't really slow me down. While exploring more in the jungley area, Jed found a gecko and wanted to go pick it up. We both then looked at each other, and said "huh, that's wierd, my legs itch," and we looked down and found like 10 tiny mosquitos on our legs! Needless to say I freaked out and then I noticed a chunk of skin missing out of my shin and it was bleeding right where I found a ton of mosquites and I started shouting, "those bugs took a chunck of skin out of my leg! We are outta here!" So Jed and I started booking it out and we saw some people who follwed us into jungley area and I told them if they didn't have bug spray they should turn around because of the carnivorous bugs and freaked them out. When we got to the car, Jed and I started laughing because we did get eaten alive by the mosquites but that chunk of skin missing was from my clumsy encounter with the light post! Oh well! LOL!!

We went to the hotel and sat on our deck and watched the local chickens (we decided they remind us of our scquirrels at home since there is so many around) and the surf. After relaxing, listening to the waves, we were so tired afterwards we took a quick cat nap before we headed off to the luau. It was fun at the luau, they greated us the a flower and shell leis, and showed us the unlimited bar! We had a few drinks, had an interesting salad. What Jed thought was sugar to sprinkle on the salad or pinapple, we were not sure at first, turned out to be salt! Salty salt! LOL! Then we had purple rolls! It was from the local Poi I guess! They also had purple mashed sweet potaotes! All natural good food! Then the luau itself was amazing! The music was great, the show was fun, and the fire dance was amazing! We took some videos but does not do it justice! Also, in Hawaii, I guess when it rains, it pours because it downed poured for like 20 minutes! Luckily we were inside and covered becuase that would have really sucked! They acutually had to close up the open facility because it rained so much!

On our way home, a HUGE praying mantus became our windshield friend for about a mile. He hung on all the way to the hotel! Jed wanted to grag him, so he got out of the car and got him off our windshield, and by the time I had grabbed the camera and ran around the car, it had climbed up Jed's arm! I took a pic and he moved up onto Jed's head and decided he didn't like that anymore and flew off!

So I think we are ready to call it a night!