One word for this luau – Kupanaha (Amazing!) I came across the Nutridge estate when I went to visit the Tantalus lookout. It’s kinda tucked in a corner of the park and it looked interesting so I googled it and turns out it’s an authentic Luau location. A little history – it was the first macadamia nut farm on Hawaii and also a sweet potato farm.
I did NOT take a lot of pictures. I was very intentional about living in the moment. I do regret not getting a better picture of the venue… this first picture is a great sense of the ambiance, though.
The reason that I LOVED this luau was because it was all about Hawaiian culture and history while keeping some of the modern fun elements. It was also very intimate – only 60 of us. We started with getting a lei, learning some Hawaiian words, and a Mai Tai. We learned about the history of the estate and the land. They brought us to a little amphitheater and we “helped” start cooking our food and watched some dancing. You can see the fire pit in the middle.
We saw the guys dance a bit and explain to us how to prep the food and that the Hawaiian version of a pressure cooker was a pit and the meat was covered with banana leaves. Honestly I forget what he was trying to show us here.
The land is just so abundant, this is a huge mango tree. They are big about not letting anything go to waste, so when they had to cut the branches they used the wood for the benches we were sitting on.
Conch shells were a way to announce the beginning of a ceremony. We moved to a new location to a deeper part of the woods for more dancing.
The men did a typical warrior dance, it was very intimidating! They did amazing.
We did also get some fire play. Always mesmerizing! This is actually originally from Tahiti or Samoa
They also had Hawaiian “games”. We only had time to play one which involved throwing a spear at a banana tree, but for the record I was much better at hitting the banana tree than Brian was (he will deny this).
I didn’t take any pictures of the food, but it was definitely your typical Hawaiian food and it was delicious (chicken, pork lau lau, sweet potato). We also had an amazing lilikoi cocktail.
This was a dream come true for me- it was so beautifully done, I learned a lot, had a ton of fun. We saw more dancing while we were eating. One downside was they are renovating the bathrooms so we had to use the ones at the park, a bit of a drive. A couple logistics, due to the nature of the setup, could’ve been improved, like I had a hard time seeing the dancers in a couple locations. We were also the last to get dinner. But really, I think that’s the cost of a small and intimate ceremony. The performers were all super nice and friendly and willing to talk to you in the downtime. I’m so glad I stumbled on this place. I guess I’d consider it a dark horse-I hadn’t heard of this before, usually it’s the big hotel luaus that I’ve heard about, but from what we heard from other couples they learned about it on the big travel websites. Superbly done. Would recommend.
