One of our stops between Auckland and Rotorua was at Hobbiton. Here, the real ‘Hobbiton’ from Lord of the Rings was filmed and has been kept partially intact. We had the option of paying to go and see it but kept our wallets tightly shut on this occasion.
Rotorua museum
After a long-ish day on the magic bus from Auckland, Chris and I arrived in Rotorua determined to have a good walk around. We were shocked to learn about the immense geothermal activity in this town and have to admit that until we went to Auckland, we weren’t even aware of any volcanic activity in New Zealand. We can’t believe our ignorance now as this makes up the most important part of New Zealand’s geology and coming to being in the first place.
In Rotorua for example, there is a dreadful smell of rotten eggs all the time - this is caused by sulphur bursting from the ground in boiling, bubbling mud pools and steam seeping up through the earth. Rotorua sits on an extremely thin crust and I just couldn’t believe it when I saw all these puddles of boiling water around us. I mean, they’ve built a city here - aren’t they scared of eruptions? The wonderful thing about this geothermal activity however is that almost every hotel or hostel has a hot spa, including ours, and Rotorua is known as a resort where you come to relax and soak away your stress.
A few minutes walk from our hostel was Kuirau Park where
mud pools bubbled and steam rose from the ground.
Determined to stop being bums, Chris and I have decided to go on a jog every remaining morning in New Zealand. We’ll see how long this lasts, I haven’t got very high hopes for us. Our first was here in Rotorua and as we jogged around a sports field we were amazed by the steam rising from the grids from the overflow rainwater.
Boiling mud pools!
Chris: “Our noses were full of egg-gas, the sulfur smell penetrates
everywhere, filling our stay with many giggles from 'laughing pools' and fart jokes.”
Apparently, Rotorua was already a natural spa destination 160 years ago (New Zealand's first ever torusit destination) which I find hard to believe but t’is true. I just can’t imagine the first settlers that came here having the money or time (they were mainly sheep farmers) to go on a merry jaunt to see the Pink and White Terraces. Who would have looked after their sheep and land? The said terraces were subsequently destroyed in 1886 by a volcanic eruption, so modern tourists have never seen them. At the Whakarewarewa village, a thermal reserve a few minutes out of town, there’s a geyser which erupts 8% of the day - boiling water shoots 31m into the air. Wow.
We went for an end-of-lent beer at the "Pig & Whistle" pub,
whose name Chris found hilarious since it was once
a police station. The microbrewed "swine" lager tasted delicious.
Another special thing about Rotorua is that the Maori culture is on display wherever you look; Rotorua is seen as the heartland of Maori culture. At the New Zealand Maori Arts and Craft Centre here, students from tribes all around the country have been learning carving and weaving traditions for the last 40 years.
Our stay tied in with Easter so we decided to go on an organised trip to a Maori village set up for tourists for an Easter treat. It was all performance and dramatisation now but it helped us understand the Moari ways before Europeans came. Maori culture and tradition really is celebrated here in New Zealand - the relationship between Maori and white people couldn’t be more different to that between the Aborigines and white people in Australia. At least, that’s how it seems to outsiders, though New Zealanders do admit that there is always going to be underlying race tensions.
We arrived by bus to a very cold village. On the way, the driver had explained the protocol of entering a ’Marae’ (Moari village) which would involve the visiting tribe accepting a peace offering. We stood in a semi-circle watching while the chief of the Ngati Tama tribe, tatooed all over and dressed in a grass skirt, challenged the chief chosen for our tribe (a gap year student from our bus).
The challenge and welcome included lots of dancing and lunging towards our chosen ‘chief’ making the traditional Maori tongue-out, eyes-out face that you may have seen in a Haka (Maori war dance now performed by the All Blacks before every game). We were warned not to laugh or imitate the warrior even though to us, it may look rather humourous.
We discovered the meaning of tribal life, arts and crafts. Strolling around the wooden houses lit by fire, the Moari people brought the village alive by showing us traditional Maori games, weaving and tattooing techniques. During a powerful concert performance, the women swung poi and sang in perfect harmonies while the men showed us what they were made of by performing a Haka.
The tradition that we enjoyed most however was the ‘hangi’; this is the Moari way of cooking using an earth oven. Chris was in heaven as he learned about this cooking technique and exclaimed with much joy how ‘earthy’ everything tasted.
The food was all cooked on hot rocks under the earth for 3-4 hours.
There was chicken, lamb, fish, two types of potatoes, carrots… For desert we enjoyed a traditional New Zealand Pavlova (though the Ozzies still claim it as theirs), steamed pudding and fruit salad. And yes, we tried all three!
We left here fit to bursting and ready for our jog the next day. Though the whole thing is now a performance for tourists, we enjoyed learning about how people used to live here until just 200 years ago before white man colonised this beautiful land: Aotearoa - The Land of the Long White Cloud.
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