Rotorua – Sulphur (stinking!) City
12th July 2006
Following our amazing day at the glowworm caves in Waitomo (we didn’t really do this justice in our last blog, as we were running out of time! It was a fantastic day, mixing the adrenaline inducing absailing and caving with the spectacular glowworm, fossil and stalectite / mite formations – incredible!) we headed east to the ‘sulphur city’ Rotorua (or Roto-vegas as it is known by the locals as it is the major tourist hub on the North Island!).
Rotorua is known as the ‘sulphur city’ as it is built upon an area of the Earth’s crust that is so thin, loads of natural thermal areas exist. The upside of this is that there are excellent thermal springs, bizzarre bubbling mud pools, and massive geysers everywhere, the downside is the whole place constantly stinks of eggy farts!
The first night in town we went out for a curry (when in Rome?), thinking that no matter what we ate, our spaceship couldn’t smell any worse than it already did! On our second day we took in a walk of the city, sampling the thermal park in the city centre and a Moari village on the outskirts. The Moari village was really cool, with it’s focal point being the local meeting hall (with amazing wood carvings) and a Christian church, with a stained glass window of Christ, in Moari dress, which when viewed sitting down, appeared to be walking on water.
Well, after an action packed, exciting day like that (!!!!) we thought we best take it easy in the evening, so booked ourselves onto a ‘cultural show’. Rotorua seems to exist on the back of its strong Moari cultural links, although most of the shows take place in the city centre hotels. We opted to take in our concert and Hangi (typical Moari buffet cooked in the ground – certainly beat the pot noodle cooked in the spaceship!) at a Moari village on the outskirts of town.
Although clearly designed for the tourists our trip to the Te-Maki village was great fun. Upon our arrival, our ‘chief’ (elected on the bus on the way out there – incredibly both Charlotte and myslef were overlooked for this role, apparantley the criteria were; male, strong, intelligent and handsome, i’ll leave it to you to try to comprehend were we fell down!) was challenged by the village ‘warriors’ to deduce wether we came in peace or war. This involved the ‘warriors’ performing a traditional kind of cross between a Haka and face gurning competiton to try to intimidate us! Thankfully our chief accepted the peace offering placed on the ground in front of us, and we were welcomed into the village as friends!
The village itself was set in an fantstic forrest area, and built to replicate how the Moaris existed prior to the Europeans landing in the early 1800s. We took in various demonstrations of how the moaris entertained themsleves in the evenings (face pulling, stick throwing, spear waving – i’m sure you get the picture) before we settled down for our ‘concert’. The concert involved traditional Moari songs and love stories, but the highlight was deifinitley the Haka – as you will see in the pictures, these guys look intimidating and ridiculous in equal measure at times!
After the concert, we settled down to our Hangi, all cooked over the previous 4 hours or so in the ground on hot rocks in the village (or so we were told anyway!). The buffet consisted of various potatoes, vegetables, and chicken and beef, definitely the best food we had had for some time. After the meal we were treated to the formal closing ceremonies before being whisked on our bus back to the centre of Rotorua, and our humble spaceship. An excellent evening, far exceeding both our expectations!
On our final day in Rotorua, we headed out to ‘Hells gate’ thermal park (the Maori name is something like Wai oro, but it was given its European name following a visit by George Bernard Shaw in the early 1900s.). Hells gate is a thermal park with loads of bubbling pools of differing colours, you can quickly understand why good old George christened it Hells Gate.
Half way round our trip it began to rain (the first bad weather of our whole trip so far!), so we hurried back to our van, and headed off to Taupo, where I’m writing this.
Tags: New Zealand, NZ
Chris and Charl
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