Kia Ora

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Originally uploaded by theslaad.

That evening we went to a Maori cultural show and dinner. It was really good. We were picked up buy the coach and taken to the village a few kilometers out of town. It is a replica village put there about 20 years ago on the site of an old village to take the Maori shows out of the hotels and back into the natural environment. Whilst on the coach our driver, Dennis, asked for a volunteer chief, we also learnt a few words of Maori. Upon arrival in to the village the chosen chiefs had to stand in front of everyone else and be welcomed by a warrior from the village. We were all warned that laughing would not be tolerated before the warrior ran out, eyes bulging and tongue protruding. It was very cool. Luckily they decided we came in peace and we could have a look around their village. There was carving, clothes making and some other stuff going on to look at before we headed into the meetinghouse for the show.
The show was really good to watch with men and women singing to us and they did the Haka. Interestingly, the women were using poi which we didn’t know were a Maori thing, but apparently they were used by the men to limber up and be flexible for using their weapons.
After the show we had a scrummy hangi dinner. Lamb and vegetables cooked in an under ground oven. It’s such a great way to cook for lots of people. They heat up the rocks and then bury them in the ground with all the meat first then potatoes then veg, cover it over with hessian sacks and then burry it with earth, trapping all the steam and cooking it all perfectly. Yum.

Today we looked at the meeting house and church by Lake Rotorua. They sit opposite each other with the church having a lot Maori influences in its design. We had a round of crazy golf, because it’s fun and then went to our final volcanic park. The park is called Hells Gate because when George Bernard Shaw visited he joked that he’d been brought to the gates of hell for being an atheist! He also named some of the features. It was similar to the other parks but had big pools of stupidly hot bubbling water and mud and also had a mud volcano. We could have had spa treatments with the mud from the area but I just bought some samples instead.

This area has been cool to visit. It’s nice to have hot pools at your campsite and fun to be driving around and pass steaming areas of ground just to the side of the road. We’re heading further up the coast this evening to a beach where you can dig in the sand for your own hot water.