Waimakariri River

Rotorua is a fascinating place. Our AirB&B hostess had given us a lot of information when we arrived about what was here to see and which sites gave the best value. The geothermal activity is everywhere in the town. You can walk in a park and see steam rising from small ponds and mud bubbling in mud pots. Some people have hot springs actually in their yards.
We went yesterday, to a Maori Living Village called Whakarewarewa. There we saw a Maori show, complete with the Haka, which was once the ritual done by the men to scare off their enemies. They make their eyes big and stick out their tongues and flex their muscles. The show was very much like the one at the New Zealand exhibit at the Polynesian Centre in Oahu.
Then we had a guide walk us around the village and explain the customs of these people who make use of the geothermal activity in their daily lives. The guide had lived her whole life in this small village. There are just 74 inhabitants because the size of the village is limited by the geothermal pools and by the New Zealand government. They use some of the hot water for bathing in communal baths and they have things that look like wells with grates in the bottom that act like ovens. They also put vegetables and eggs into cheesecloth bags and lower them into boiling pools to cook. We had corn, right out of the hot pool, for lunch. Even the ground throughout the whole area is warm to the touch. There are some geysers as well, but we didn’t see any big eruptions from them, just a bit of water and lots of steam.
We walked around on our own afterward a little ways from the village, where there are many mud pots that sound like an old-fashioned coffee perculator. There was some smell of sulphur but it was not as strong as we had expected.
On arriving home, we were having a wobbly pop out on our deck when our host dropped by. After visiting for a bit, we offered Julian refreshment and he said he would go shower and return. So both Lynn and Julian came back, bottle of wine in hand for a good long chat. Maybe Kiwis are as friendly as Aussies. They even invited us for dinner the next night. You can’t beat that for hospitality.Read more