Hawaii - Saturday, December 27, 2008

We started off today at a leisurely pace and made our first stop at the Kauai Hindu Monastery which is situated on a 458-acre sanctuary including a theological seminary, publishing center, the Iraivan Siva temple, and serves a general destination for Hindus who come on pilgrimage from around the world. It was our first visit to a Hindu monastery and we had to learn a few rituals in order to respect the grounds properly and pay tribute to the peace and tranquility of the area. I have included a couple of photos from the grounds of this amazing retreat.




Our next activity was a helicopter tour of the island. There are several companies that provide these tours, but we opted to go with Air Kauai because they were highly recommended in several travel books and on several Web sites. There user ratings were also quite high. I would recommend this activity for anyone coming to the island for the first time. It would be most beneficial to do the tour near the beginning of your trip. It provides an excellent orientation to the island, its regions and various key landmarks. Of course, we took hundreds of pictures, but since I cannot put all those here, I am including only a few - including one that shows you the rainbow we flew through.






After the helicopter ride, we met the rest of the family out at Poipu Beach for some snorkeling and surfing. No photos of that though since we were all in and out of the water and expensive cameras and salt water don't play nice together. My last post will be up tomorrow! Aloha friends!