Aloha Hawaii!!

Stepping off of the plane in Honolulu, we were greeted by sunny, cloudless skies, a light breeze and beautiful, warm temperatures around 30C! Hawaii was a welcome change to the harsh Australian winter with temperatures dipping to 15C! J

Do you know what Aloha means? Here comes the “My Big Fat Greet Wedding” explanation of the word:

As you may know, Aloha is used universally in Hawaii to mean things like “hello”, “good-bye”, “love” etc. Aloha comes from two words: Alo meaning “to share” and ha meaning “breath”. So literally, Aloha means to share breath. In the old days, the people used to greet one another by pressing their foreheads together and they would each inhale through the nose and out through the mouth – sharing breath. We were told that this practice stopped once the Hawaiians started using onions and garlic in their cooking, and so started simply saying “Aloha” as their means of greeting. At least this is what we were told!

Hawaii was not part of our original plan.  Since we spent a lot more time than planned in India and Vietnam, our travel schedule became a bit tight as we had some set plans in Vancouver beginning on June 14.  As a result, we decided that we were not going to make it to New Zealand this time around.  We had thought we would rent a camper-van/RV while in NZ and travel around the islands camping, but the prospect of nights below 0 C did not appeal to us either, making the decision a little easier to handle!

Taking a true vacation!

Over the course of the year we have had many people say to us “So, how do you like your vacation so far?” Now, I’m not sure about you but I’ve never spent any vacations writing over 300 blog posts! Rather than saying we’ve been on vacation, I’d say we’ve been doing a year of “global immersion” – education for all of us, not just the kids!

But Hawaii has been our one true vacation on this trip. Using a website called Redweek.com, we were able to find timeshare apartments that were being sold off by their owners. This is usually done when people are not able to use the weeks that they have purchased from the various timeshare companies (like RCI or Interval International) and rather than lose the money invested, the owners will sell it off if for no other reason than to recuperate their annual maintenance fees. And this is exactly what we did in Hawaii. Katina found a fantastic 2 bedroom suite at the Marriott Ko Olina Beach Club on Oahu, and we found paradise!

The resort was fantastic…the grounds were beautiful…

There were wonderfully warm pools, some with waterfalls cascading into them…

And the resort was right on the beach…

After a day of relaxing at the beach, what better way to pick things up than by attending a Luau? The Marriott hosts a luau once every week, and it was very entertaining.

We got to see how fire is made by rubbing two sticks together. This was done in less than 2 minutes!

Rubbing sticks together

There’s an ember…blow on it!

Add coconut fibers – very flammable

Voila! FIRE!

There were performances by Hawaiian hula dancers…

Tahitian dances…

Men, too!

What luau is complete without a tree climber?

The high light of the evening were the fire dancers…

All this was done to the beat of drums and the stummings of guitars.

That was day 1.

The rest of the week was pretty exciting as well, and almost every one ended the same way…

Aloha!