7.1.06

Rotorua

Today was a serious day. To avoid confusion and clutter, I’m going to break this one into sections.

Part I – The bus ride
We headed from Auckland to Rotorua on bus, which is about a 2 hour ride straight through. New Zealand consists of three islands:

+The North Island
+The South Island
+Stewart’s Island

The North Island is covered with grassy hills, and is where the Lord of the Rings movies were filmed (ooo, ahhh). Most of the countryside is used for sheep and cow farms, which I’ll talk more about in a minute. The North Island is where 90% of the Maori population lives, mostly due to the better weather. The Maoris are very unlike the Australian Aboriginees. The Maoris didn’t come to New Zealand until the 1300s, whereas the Aboriginees were in Australia for 30-40,000 years. The Maoris came from Polynesian Islands, and have similar customs and rituals to the Samoans and Hawaiians. There are extremely interesting social variations between the two groups that are directly related to the land and living conditions in their respective countries. …Footnotes available upon consultation.

We found out on the bus that we will not be visiting Mount Cook because the runway is snowed in, so we are spending an extra day in Te Anau. Tom the tour guide said it’s better that it snowed us out as opposed to snowing us in, and I couldn’t agree more.

Part II – The dairy farm
As I mentioned before, the North Island is covered with dairy and livestock farms. We went to one for lunch, and I had some of the tastiest cheese and ice cream of my life. In the warmer 9 months of the year, the 240 cows on the farm are milked twice a day. That’s a lot of dairy. Nathan and I spent most of our time playing with a dog and rolling around in the grass.

Part III – Agrodome
The Agrodome is this kind of hokey county fair type place where this big fat dude comes out and talks about sheep and sheep shearing and makes fun of the Asian tourists. I liked it because I was able to make friends with a few nice sheep, and my mom liked the dogs. My brother went “Zorbing,” which is this strange sport where you’re put in a giant bubble and rolled down a small hill. Being as we had eaten only a half-hour or so before the excursion, I passed and went with the crowd to the sheep show. My brother said it was fun for the first half (about 30 seconds), after which he got antsy and kind of claustrophobic. Apparently he did the “wet Zorb,” so he was put in the bubble without a harness accompanied by a large bucket of warm water. Interesting.


Part IV – Geothermal Areas and Maori dances

The last part of the day consisted of a trip to the Rotorua hot springs and some Maori cultural education. The hot springs/geysers were pretty neat but smelled like sulfur, and we were in and out of there pretty quick. By far the most amusing part of the hot springs were the mud pits, which look like something out of the Land Before Time and made flatulence noises non-stop.

We learned a little bit about (former) Maori daily life, such as how to turn the leaves of the flax plant into fiber for rope and clothing. Right before dinnertime, we had a small presentation of the Maori “Haka,” or war dance, which would definitely make me wave my white flag. If you ever see Maori carvings or images with wide eyes and protruding tongues – that is part of the Haka; it’s meant to intimidate the enemy, and it does a pretty good job. The New Zealand rugby team the All Blacks (I have plenty of stories about All Blacks merchandise and how hilarious the name is to my family and I) does the Haka dance before every match.