There's something about Hawaii that infuses one with a trememdous sense of peace and well-being. Maybe it's just the warm sunny weather. Perhaps it's some narcotic effect produced by the emissions of the tropical plants. Whatever it is, Jenny and I noticed it pretty early on, and I'm now going to blame it for not having updated this blog in several days.

Wednesday was snorkeling day. We went down to the activities shack near the beach and rented some snorkeling gear, then went right out in the beach in front of the complex.

We got out a little ways and there were a lot of interesting rock formations in the water. We played around these for a while, but the waves were kind of rough here so we moved on to the shallow rocky beach next door that I mentioned in my earlier post.

The main thing about the rocky part of Poi'pu beach is its wildlife. Lots of very cool fish. I wish we had gotten pictures (we do have a disposable underwater camera with us, but sadly it's not digital and we didn't bring it along). Most notable were the big tie-dyed fish that swam alone near the bottom and the schools of long thin pointy looking ones that Jenny was afraid to swim through because they looked like they might poke us.

We went out for a late lunch after this and came back to watch the sun set - this was less dramatic than it might have been, as the sun made it almost to the horizon and then hid behind a cloud. We went back to the hotel and relaxed for a while, then went out for dinner at the islands nicest italian restaurant, The Pomodoro, which really was as good as the best italian places we frequent in New York.

Yesterday we had two major planned activities - a tour of a Hindu monastery and a Lu'au. We arrived at the Hindu monastery by just before 9AM, when the tour was supposed to start. Those of you who know me may think that it was my interest in eastern religion that brought us to this destination, but in fact it was a blurb in the guidebook talking about a waterfall there that can not be seen any other way. When we got there, the waterfall was highly overrated, but the temples and the ground made it well worth spending the morning on.

There's already one temple on the grounds, for the past four years they have been in the process of building a new one from stones hand-carved in India. They expect that construction will be complete in 2010. Jenny got some great pictures of the grounds and we meditated for a little while in their existing temple before altars to Ganesha and Shiva.

When we came back, we were both strangely exhausted so we took a nap for the afternoon. Then it was time for the Lu'au!

If you've never been to a Lu'au, it's basically a big feast with a Hawaiian show that builds in magnitude as the feasting subsides. Although the meal was very meat oriented, I was able to find more than enough vegetarian food to eat.

I wasn't really wild about the show (I don't much go in for that kind of thing) but then again, I can think of worse things to do than watch lots of pretty smiling young hula-girls.

One interesting thing that came out of this: we took a tour of the garden at the site where the lu'au was held, a plantation, and were treated to a discussion of the origins of the Hawaiian people by our tour guide, a quirky native woman with an accent hard to place. It turns out that the native Hawaiians are an amalgam of all of the races who have come to the islands - polynesian, anglo-saxon, japanese, filipino... I guess this accounts for their very welcoming attitude towards visitors. Never before have I seen such a lack of a cultural "dividing line" between the native people and the tourists.

As I write this, the sun is rising higher into the sky. We are preparing for our helicopter ride this afternoon. This should be interesting.