Hawaii, day 5

In spite of my annoying cold, I went for a lovely walk this morning.  I met a teddy, just hanging out in a tree, waiting for his person to return.

Then I saw a rainbow.  

Have I mentioned enough times that I love koi? 

Most of the day passed by the pool with books, which is about as perfect as a day can be.  I did nap a bit in the afternoon because we planned to go to a luau.  Now, I had been to luaus before and I was not impressed.  It has been a long time, but I was left with the impression of bad food and cultural appropriation before I even knew what cultural appropriation was.  Times have, mostly, changed, thankfully.

This was the luau we attended. 

  

This is me, worrying about how it was going to be:  

However, inside there were demonstrations of various Polynesian crafts and games.  The band was amazing.  And there was food.  Here is the imu (pit) with the pig roasting in it:  

The young men in charge of the roasting (men traditionally did the cooking in Hawaii) removed the layer of sand from the top, revealing the leaf-coated basket over the meat:  

Then they removed the basket and voila! Dinner! 

Actually, there were lots of other foods.  I tried fern shoots, but also ate poke, lomilomi salmon, some kind of octopus salad, sweet potatoes, laulau, chicken long rice, grilled chicken, and haupia, most of which are in this picture:  

And here are a couple of pictures of the show, which traced Hawaiian culture in myth and history and music and dance.  Spoiler:  white people ruin pretty much everything.  The dancers were strong and talented; I seem to have taken pictures of only the women, but the men were lovely, too.  

More cold medicine and bed for me.