New Zealand Road Trip – A Day in Rotorua
8th Jan. Day 8.
Smelly Sulphur City, known as Rotorua.
Woke up to the rain lashing down. Not what we wanted!!!
After checking our travel book, we went for breakfast at a quirky place called Zippy’s Central Bar & Cafe. We don’t think it’s the same Zippy from Rainbow. Left cafe. Still lashing down. Not a beach day!!!
We decided to head to a little park called Kuirau Park, which has a Geothermal Area.
New Zealand Road Trip – A Day in Rotorua
Weird to have rain coming down, yet bubbling pools of water with steam rising from everywhere. After putting our Kags in Bags to good use, we headed off to ZORB Rotorua, after a quick stop at the big lake.
At ZORB we decided to take the plunge and have a go at Zydro. This means we both crawled into a massive ball filled with water. We then got pushed down a big hill both sloshing around in the bottom. We were wet anyway so we figured we’d go for it.
Luckily the water in the ball was warm, and it was great fun. Although Suzanne had a sore throat from yelling and screaming, and Rich had sore ears from listening to Suzanne yelling and screaming!!!!
New Zealand Road Trip – A Day in Rotorua – Mitai Maori Village
A quick snack at Fat Dog Cafe followed by a quick walk around another Geothermal area near the lake. We then headed back to the hotel to be picked up for our ending excursion at the Mitai Maori Village. Brief description below, but it was such a great experience, I wanted to write a more detailed post.
On arrival, we got given our table number and the organiser introduced himself and found out how many different countries were represented. 21 in total, he then asked if anyone was here in NZ for their honeymoon this left 4 couples standing including us!
The organiser then, from the 4 couples, chose Rich to be the Chief to represent the 21 nations, or tribes as we were known that night.
New Zealand Road Trip – A Day in Rotorua – Rich the Chief
This was a very serious role where Rich as our Chief had to meet the Maori Chief on the stage, give a short speech introducing his tribes, the 21 countries, and perform a Maori greeting, which involved the touching of noses twice!!!
The good thing was we both got seats right at the front, so had a great view, and could see everything.
After the formalities, we were told all about the Maori culture, including how they fought and the rituals they went through. There was some very exuberant singing and dancing including a full-length version of the Haka.
New Zealand Road Trip – A Day in Rotorua – Eating Hangi
After this, we headed back for dinner, or Hangi as they called it.
This is a unique way of cooking, where the food is placed in holes in the ground. There, they cook for a few hours using just the heat generated from the ground, which is hot due to the Geothermal activity going on. We were given a demonstration of this when we first arrived.
Finally, just as night fell at about 9pm, we were taken on a tour through the woods (in case anyone is wondering, it was still raining!!!). We learnt a bit more about how the built their houses from different trees, and finally to a small lake surrounded by Glow Worms, a cool sight.
It was then back on the coaches, back to the hotel for much-needed sleep.
