Our last two days of Hawaii were a little slower, but just as much fun as the rest of the week. On Friday we headed back to "The Mac Farm" (as in macadamia nuts) for the Polynesian show. Mom and Mike are BIG fans of this show. In fact, they've seen it 31 times, they like it so much!!!!
The show was actually a tour. On the tour we got to see lots of native plants like coconut trees (of course), star fruit, kona coffee. But we're not here to see photos of plants are we?
The Mac farm also happened to be the site of the filming of several T.V. shows... Like... Gilligans Island!
I do believe these mountains are frequently featured in films and such including... well I'll tell you in a minute.
This is a popularly used movie set. This little complex has several different paint schemes and has been used in movies like 50 First Dates, You, Me, and Dupree, Pearl Harbor and more. Also one of the little shack-type parts of it was where some of the ER episodes where trips to Africa were involved were filmed.
The dock where Tattoo stood and yelled, "DE PLANE! DE PLANE!!!" was also there.
Not the greatest photo, but it shows two of my favorite aspects of the tour. #1) The bus we road was one that was used in the filming of Jurassic Park. #2) One of the trees that you can barely see out the window that was on the other side of the bus happens to be the tree in which a plane was hung up in the T.V. show LOST. I may have my scenes mixed up, but I think the plane they are referring to is the one leading to Boone's demise. (*Sigh* I liked Boone). The mountains featured above make their appearance in that show, some other scenes were filmed on the grounds we toured. Additionally during another point of the trip, we apparently drove by a very large ranch where most of the filming is done. I thought this all was very, very cool. And I thought LOTS of you, Lauren!
The ladies of the audience--even the little ones--were all given crowns to wear.
The tour included a show where lots of general information was given out and our tourguides played with fire.
Making Fire
Holding Fire
Dancing with Fire
And.... Eating Fire?!
Just so we could say we'd been there, we visited the Dole Plantation. I was disappointed to learn that it's not a functioning farm anymore. It's just a touristy place where you can buy really expensive pineapple doo-dads.
But you do get to see cute little baby pineapples.
And eat pineapple ice cream.
Even Abbie.
Clearly, I fell of the Weight Watching bandwagon while on vacation....
Which leads me to the very best tasting part of Hawaii: Matumotos.
Matsumotos is famous for amazingly wonderful Shave Ice. They put ice cream at the bottom and condensed milk over the top which all sounds very strange, but it absolutely DELICIOUS. Here we all are enjoying it.
A pretty church outside of Matsumotos.
And finally, here are Andy and I on our way back to the airport on the very last day. We were not at all ready to leave. Hawaii was never a place I would have put on my top 5 list of places to visit, but once I got there I didn't want to leave. I'd go back in a heartbeat. We spent some of the sweetest days we've had as a family there, and we are so incredibly, incredibly grateful to Mom and Mike for giving us the opportunity to go and for showing us so many amazing things.
