Last weekend, we had a 3-day weekend due to the Queen's Birthday (one advantage of not fighting for independence from the Brits I guess) so a few of us decided to go to Rotorua. If you recall, I went there for a day or two over Christmas Break as mentioned in a previous post. Rotorua is a city about 3 hours south of Auckland where there is a lot of geothermal activity. James and Paula organised this trip as they had an Irish friend, Liam and his girlfriend Katarina visiting. Paul, Fiona, Alex and me joined them. We headed down on Saturday afternoon, but unfortunately, it was raining and pretty cold when we arrived on Saturday. Also, since we got a late start, it was already getting dark (it gets dark here now at around 5:30). We stayed at a backpacker place called Treks which is in a convenient location in town. The place was pretty good with a nice communal kitchen / lounge where we spent the first evening playing Cranium, having some drinks, and catching up. I must say that the others were terrible at guessing my humdingers (songs you have to hum and your team guesses what they are). They did get a kick out of trying to make me whistle though.
Paul and James cleaning up the mess after dinner at the hostel
Paula, James and Alex hanging out before an intense game of Cranium
Liam, Katarina, Fiona, Paul
The following day, we were up early and headed out to Wai-O-Tapu thermal park which is one of the well-known geothermal places in New Zealand. It's a bit of a tourist trap but also some beautiful thermal pools and formations. There is a geyser there that goes off every morning at 10:30 which was cool to see but a little bit of cheating takes place as a guy drops some soap in the geyser to make it erupt. Apparently, the geyser was discovered about 100 years ago when some people were washing their clothes in the hot pool and the soap they were using caused the geyser to go off...that would have been a bit of a surprise, eh?
Me with the Lady Knox Geyser in the background
Video of the geyser going off
The Champagne Pool at Wai-O-Tapu
Me in front of the champagne pool
Look at all the steam!
This lake was really cool as it was all green!
After the thermal park, we headed back for a good lunch then relaxed a bit before heading to one of the local Maori villages called Mitai to enjoy a traditional Maori feast called a Hangi where the food is cooked underground using heated rocks and to see some traditional song/dance performances. This was a great evening. The Maori experience was really cool as the guide led us into the woods where the Maori paddled past us through the fresh water spring river in their canoe then led us up to the village for a traditional performance. We even had a "chief" within our group who had to approach the Maori tribe in the traditional way where they approach with their weapons and lay a flower or tree branch/fern down as a sign of peace. It was a good time.
After dinner we went next door to a place called Rainbow Springs where we saw the fresh water springs full of huge trout. We also got to see some Kiwi birds! This was the first time that I had ever seen these things. They were bigger than I expected. They were in an enclosure but it was pretty open for us to see them. They were scurrying around in the pens but we were not allowed to take flash photos as it could apparently kill them.
After the show and the Rainbow Springs tour, it was time to head back to the hostel. We were all pretty exhausted so went to bed shortly after getting back then had to drive home the next morning. It was a good weekend once again.
The Maori performers coming in on the canoe
Another view of them on the canoeVideo of the Haka dance
Another video of one of the songs
Nate, I like the Haka video - looks like it would strike fear into the hearts of their enemies - how did you like the Hangi-cooked food? Dad
ReplyDeleteThe food was great - apparently, this was one of the few villages that still cooked in the traditional way with hot rocks. I think a lot of them have modernized and use gas now which seems a little unfair.
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