Good day, Sunshine..
And it is! With temps in the mid 20’s, and only a few fluffy clouds in the sky, we had a very pleasant and leisurely drive through the lake area into the caldera of a massive ancient volcano, in which Rotorua sits. Surrounded by the mountains that are the walls of the old volcano, with Lake Rotorua in the centre, it really is a stunning area to visit – a geographers paradise! – Well at least Jen will understand why Mum is raving on about it! Boiling mud pools, hot springs, geysers...Hmmm heaven! (to some!). To others, of course, it’s a smelly mess!
Several former NZ visitors had told us that we must go to a “Hangi” – a cultural evening and meal in the Maori tradition, where part of the meal is cooked in a Hangi - a hole in the rocks with geothermally heated natural steam doing the cooking! We went to one that is supposed to be one of the most authentic (we weren’t into one of the more “sanitised” posh hotel versions) choosing rather to go to one at Whaka (the shortened version) or see above to be more precise! The guide could say it, but I suspect he was the only one who could! If you’ve ever wondered why NZ Maori names are so difficult to pronounce, it’s because until the arrival of Cpt Cook, it was only a spoken language; when they came to write it down, the sounds worked best with only 14 of our letters! So you never see a C or B or J, X,Y,Z etc! Another challenge!
Having been to a similar evening in Rorotonga, and both sets of people coming from the same area originally, it was fascinating to see the difference between the two cultures. The Polynesian Maori the much more gentle race, the NZ Maori very much the warrior race. We did, of course, feel obliged to point out to our guide that the All Blacks were not God’s gift to rugby (although there have times when we would both have agreed with him!) Well, as true rugby fans, we couldn’t let the side down. But it did make him laugh when we said “Trust us, real rugby fans, and we come to NZ in the closed season!”