Bubbly & Native

So after our wet water action in Waitomo we headed to Rotorua, which is the most geothermal active part of NZ. To your lay-man this means there’s loads of bubbly mud, steaming pools and sulphur smell everywhere. Reports of your clothes stinking of sulphur were total balls; the smell comes in very mild waves and, for those of you who remember, is no worse than some of Mr. Bowen’s psychotic experiments.

We went to this really cool reserve just outside of Rotorua called Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, which was a really concentrated area of pools & craters that had formed due to the volcanic earth temperatures & were all coloured from mineral deposits. Our visit started with the Lady Knox Geyser (pronounced guy-zer not geeza) which we were a bit dubious of as it goes off regularly at 10:15 every day – I had visions of some elaborate valve system that backed up the pressure but they actually “prompt” the eruption by chucking a bit of soap down the earthen funnel, which breaks down the surface tension of the underground pools and up shoots the water. I did video this on the camera but I haven’t worked out how to blog the footage. The rest of the park looked wicked, lots of steam and various mineral smells, but the colours of rocks & pools were amazing – some a bit pastel and others quite vivid, this would be a wicked field trip for chemistry classes.


The afternoon was spent in a spa pool and generally skanking about. I did go to a bottle shop to get some beer as I hadn’t had a drink since Uluru and fancied trying the national beers – Tui from the North Island & Speight’s from the south. So I placed my 2 bottles of beer on the counter, prepared my payment of $2.72 (about a quid) and then got asked for I.D! I guess I should be flattered as they only ask for id if you look under 25, but it was really annoying as the woman wouldn’t accept my photo driving licence and I have a beard! How many 24 year olds have a slightly receding hairline, a couple of wrinkles and an effing beard?

In the evening, we went on a Maori show and dinner trip, to the Tamaki village, which was wicked. The main reason for doing this was to have a traditional Maori feast cooked in a Hangi – which is an a big pit filled with white hot rocks, the food if placed in baskets on top of the rocks and this is all covered in wet, hessian sacks and left for a few hours. The food was delicious, especially the Kumara, which is like a sweet potato. We also had some very tasty but not-so-Maori Pavlova for pudding. Surrounding our meal though was a late evening walk through the village to see the various crafts, games & activities that occur in traditional Maori life and a really cool show with singing and dancing. The men of the village also performed a Haka which is a lot scarier when demonstrated by tattoo-faced natives with spears, rather than a bunch of rugger-buggers. The driver on our coach journey home also encouraged us to sing national songs (the UK one being Yellow Submarine!?), The Wheels on the Bus (for which he did all the actions) and pretending our bus was a waka (Maori for canoe) so we all had to chant & row.


The rest of our trip after Rotorua has been a bit uneventful really. After 3 and a half weeks of good weather when we’ve needed it, these last few days have been a bit drizzly and manky, probably as this is a national holiday weekend. We had intended to go to Hot Water Beach, which does what it says on the tin – the beach has hot water. Basically for about 2 hours either side of low tide you can dig yourself a pit in the sand and the naturally warm waters fill it up. But as it was pissing down this was a no go. We also went thorough Matamata, which is only of note as local farmland was used in LOTR as Hobbitdom. There was a tour out to said farm but as Peter Jackson had to remove all traces of every set created for LOTR we felt that $200 each to see some hills and a plywood Hobbit hole was a bit rubbish.

BTW - I did finally get to try some beer. The local bottle shop didn’t even ask for id and when I queried the law they said that any photo id is cool, so Liquor Land will be getting a very stroppy letter. Incidentally I quite liked the Tui’s East Indian Pale Ale but the Speight’s Gold Medal tastes like Stella or 1664, which IMHO isn’t actually that pleasant. Bring on the Bourbon!