Hi everyone.

As you can tell from the time since our last blog, we have been very busy exploring America.

On Wednesday we went to the Polynesian Cultural Centre (PCC), which meant we were up early, as we had to catch a bus from down the street. Our guide turned out to be from Hamilton. On our way out to the PCC we went passed movie/tv sites for 50 First Dates, Pirates of the Caribbean 4, Lost (TV series) and parts of Karate Kid (portrayed as being in Japan).

On our hour trip out, we experienced flash flooding in the valley we had to travel through, which was quite surreal. When we arrived we had a Polynesian BBQ lunch, before we did anything.

The PCC is set up so you can walk through the 6 different Islands where they teach you a little bit about that island. Our first Island, was Fiji, where we participated in a stick music game. After this we went to Tahiti, where we both learnt how to dance Island style and then watched how a traditional oven is made, and got to taste coconut bread (the recipe is in the pitcures if you are interested). After this, we went to Hawaii to learn the hula and then watched the canoe pagent, which showed all of the Island demostrating their native dances.

Tonga was next, where they performed a drum presentation, and invited 3 guests up to participate, 2 Americans and a Japanese man. Where the Japanese man when prompted to ask the crowd "Are you ready? in Japanese he actually spoke the English words "Are you ready?, in Japanese" rather than speaking in Japanese which was quite a laugh.

Following this we went to the Island of NZ, where we watched presentations of Haka, Poi & Rakau. It was quite funny to watch elderly Americans trying to use the poi. Then onto Samoa, where we watched them start a fire using two sticks, split a coconut and get the coconut juice, meat and milk then climb a coconut tree. We then went and had tea, and watched an Imax movie on a huge screen, based on Island life.

After all of this we watched the impressive show, Ha - Breath of Life which went for about 90 minutes and featured traditional music, dancing and some warrior scenes from the six islands that are represented in the PCC.

On Thursday (the 10th) we went snorkelling at Hanauma Bay. The scenery out there is absolutely amazing. We didnt take our camera, so borrowed the picture for this blog off the internet so you can see how beautiful it is. Snorkelling was amazing, and the fish that we were able to see just topped off the experience. It was amazing that the water was clear when you looked at it from above and then it was cloudy when you were actually snorkelling in it and you could only see 2m in front of you.

As well as that, the trip to and from Hanauma Bay was an adventure in itself. We had to take a detour around the town as a water main under the street had burst. Our driver was a very energetic tiny person from the orient. Man was she a laugh. Once we got back to Waikiki we went to Dennys for tea. Apart from the couple a few tables over, who seemed to complain about everything, the meal was nice.

On our way out of Dennys, there were customers coming in, who were turned away because of the tsunami warning???? What a great way to find out!!! Out on the street everything seemed normal, so we just assumed that we must have misheard. As we were walking down the street, we heard "I got the kronik if you need it later". If your not sure what that is, just google it.

Once we got back to the hotel, and saw the news on TV in the bar, we realised we would be in for an interesting night. In the Hotel we were in, it was on the border of the exacutaion zone, but as we were on the 5th floor, we were told that we were high enough up in the hotel to be fine. But the rest of the town completely emptied out. The petrol stations had lines going around the corner in order to fill up and the grocery stores reopened for people to buy water etc as they didn't want people to stockpile from the town water supply in case the firemen needed it later. We watched the ongoing news coverage as they monitored the damage in Japan as well as the estimated tsunami arrival time.

As 3 am rolled around, the news channels had live coverage of various costal points around the various Hawaiian islands. You could see the water receding and then coming back into the shore. The water levels got higher each time and then went right back to the level they were 10minutes earlier. I think we were just very fortunate to be where we were. One of the other islands had significant waves (and damage with a two story beachhouse being swept out to sea) where as we only managed an increase of a few feet. Thank you all for your thoughts and well wishes posted on facebook. Pretty amazing experience only a week into our trip but we were glad that we were leaving Hawaii the next day!

So once we got the all clear and Troy managed to get about an hours sleep, we had to get up and get on our way to the airport in order to fly to Los Angeles. The Hawaii airport was interesting, seen a chick shaving her snail trail (in public) which astounded us. Little did we know that we were about to see and hear even crazier stuff!