Rotorua
Travel Location: Rotorua,New-Zealand
Fortunately the bus ride to Rotorua was rather uneventful, I was almost expecting some sort of natural disaster to befall me on the way but I was thankfully proven wrong. I was certainly conscious of the fact that I was traveling through an active volcanic area after my previous experience.
I ended up taking the bus with a friendly guy from Amsterdam that had stayed at Rainbow Lodge and also happened to be booked in at the same hostel so we took a walk together from the bus station. Whenever I have a walk of longer than 10 minutes with all of my bags it makes me realize that I have too much stuff. I think that once I can eliminate carrying around food then I might be able to get everything back down to a much more manageable size. I look forward to that day….
After settling in I decided to head off and get the lay of the land, as well as hit the I-Site, the infamous information centers that you can find in even the smallest of towns here in New Zealand. After booking my ticket to the Mitai Maori Show and Hangi I headed off to the lake, as Rotorua does have a large lake but it’s really not the focus since the thermal areas are much more interesting. The lake held a lot of diving ducks, they were really small and had a different call, almost like a beeping noise. The black swans with the red beaks were also very beautiful but I understand that they can be a bit mean and bite you. I had fun watching the numerous sea planes taxiing and taking off out in the lake, I’m sure the views from up above must be spectacular!
Further along the lake shore there is a Maori village called Ohinemutu that has the traditional meeting house and a christian chapel as well as some carving workshops and a cemetery. I was enthralled with the carvings and paintings and snapped loads of photos. From here I walked to the thermal park in the center of the city. Strange to think that the entire area is built in an active volcanic zone, sometimes you forget and then the strong smell of sulphur hits you and you realize what’s going on. I stood on an elevated path over a boiling sulphuric pool so I was certainly aware.
The receptionist was really nice and helped me get a ride from another guest the next day out to the Waitopo Thermal Park where we made it in time to watch the park ranger set off the geyser by pouring a packet of soap into the exhaust hole. I learned that the soap breaks the surface tension in the water and this causes the geyser to erupt. It does naturally erupt but it is not that predictable so thus the show every day at 10:00. It really was a show too, I felt as if I were at an amusement theme park as there were permanent seats built around the geyser and we had a packed house. I had never seen a geyser before so it was interesting, but only for a couple of minutes and then I was like, yeah, there sure is lots of water coming out of the hole….
The Thermal Park was much more informative, even though you can walk through the thermal area in Rotorua for free Waitopo has a much more varied landscape, and much stronger smells if you are into inhaling sulphuric fumes! Whew! But the colors of the land and water, due to the different types of minerals, are surreal. When I got back I went for a run and then headed off to the natural spa pools at the resort on the lake, I had a free ticket from booking the Maori cultural show. The pools were really nice at night, you could look out over the lake from two of them (there were 4 pools all with varying degrees of water temperature). I smelled a bit of sulphur by the time I left but my body felt great!
The next morning I decided to once again try my hand at renting a bike. This time I spent a bit more and got a much better suited bike for my ride out to the Blue and Green Lakes. Originally I was just going to check these lakes out but I was having such a good time on the bike that I decided to go a bit further to Tarwarea Lake. Of course, the road to get to the pier was a steep drop down and as I was streaming down the road I kept reminding myself that I would have to ride back UP this hill. Surprisingly, I was fine this time around. I blame the bike for my previous difficulties on the Banks Peninsula.
I did something the next day that made me feel young again, I sat almost all day out on the swing and read a book. It was nice to take a break from thinking about what I was going to be doing next. Constantly traveling is sort of like working as you are always trying to figure out what you want to do, or what you are missing out on, or what you can or can’t afford. It’s quite the challenge!
Once again I was happily reunited with Linda at the Funky Green. Fortunately she was able to get a ticket to the Mitai show that evening so we went together. The bus picked us up at the hostel and took a group of about 6 of us out to the Mitai village. I was hesitant to do this because I am not into the forced touristy sort of things that some of these events end up being, but I was pretty sure that I was not going to have the opportunity to be invited to a traditional hangi so this was my only other option to experience one. To explain, a hangi is a meal that is cooked in metal baskets in a hole in the ground. They fill the hole first with hot coals and then add water to steam the meat and vegetables that they place on top of the coals before covering the hole back up again with soil. They leave this covered for at least 3 hours and then you have a feast! The guy who was commentating for the dinner was really fascinating. There was at least 100 people in the dining hall and he was able to say hello to every nationality that was present in their native languages, I think that there were 17 different nations present. Well, nearly everyone, there were two people from Mongolia and this threw him a bit, but I ran into him talking to the Mongolians after dinner and he was writing down how to say hello. Very impressive. After they showed us where our food was being cooked they took us out to meet the native tribe. We being the land of many nations, we had to meet the Mitai’s and formally greet them, we even had a designated chief from the audience. The tribe arrived on a canoe in the forest, the idea is to intimidate us with their facial expressions and tattoos and I think that they did a good job. We were then led to a meeting hall where they officially greeted our chief and then showed us the traditional types of dances. The whole thing was really well done and I was impressed with how they always kept a bit of humor throughout the whole performance, it made it feel much more personal. Finally we got to eat the food we were shown earlier, it was certainly a feast! After dinner we were taken on a guided tour of the forest in groups of 20 and led by a native Maori. He pointed out the different plants and how the silver fern was used as a trail marker because if you turn the branch over it glows silver in the moonlight. This was also my first brush with the glow worms, as it was night and we all had torches (that’s flashlights to all you Americans) we were led to a spring where we shut off all the lights and the worms really do glow! Our guide explained that the natives believed them to be fairy eyes but the scientific explanation is much less romantic as the reason the worms glow is because of the poop they excrete! Ha!
