NZ-sulphury Rotorua
Our drive to Rotorua (the land of the thermal springs) seemed to be a typical spring day in NZ with clouds and occasional rain on our drive south from the Bay of Plenty. As we arrived into Rotorua, we could distinctly detect our approach due to the famous sulphur smell of the city. Our advice to you would be to carefully pick your hotel so that you don't stay too close to the thermal active areas - those are the smelly places! We stayed in the Hot Rocks Backpackers which was quite basic; it's worth checking out the other hostels in town.
Our first order of business was to book our "adventures" in Rotorua. Apparently there is a strong Maori culture still present here, so we decided to sign up for one of the traditional hangis, which is a show of Maori song & dance as well as their traditional pit BBQs. These reminded us of Hawaiian luaus. We booked a tour through the i-site in Rotorua, which included a free trip to the Rotorua museum or a spa. We chose the museum as we thought it might be useful to get some local culture.
A side note about visiting NZ - nearly every town has at least 1 i-site, which are useful information centers with free maps, hostel/hotel/motel listings, and other tourist services. We used these quite a bit to get useful info and local knowledge of the towns we visited since we had done very little planning prior to arriving in NZ.
We first hit the Rotorua museum housed in an old spa center considered to be a 'healing center' in the old days including treatments such as scary electric baths. Since we had just a short time before our Maori hangi, we skipped the last half of the tour describing the details of the spa in the old days and focused on the much more stimulating Maori exhibits describing the history of how the Moari arrived, how they survived, and artifacts of their culture, weapons, jewelry, and homes. That part was pretty cool since we knew nothing about the Maori before arriving in NZ.
Our hangi show started with an entertaining bus ride to the site. Our driver was a friendly and funny Maori who liked to poke fun at Ozzie rugby. On the way, we learned each bus load of people (our 'tribe') had to pick a "chief" to represent our "tribe" for the welcome ceremony. There was an Aussie couple honeymooning so our bus driver picked the lucky groom to be our chief, who was responsible to receive the Maori welcome and lead us into the village. There, we saw Maori doing traditional activities like war dances, songs, and then we went into their main house for a song & dance show followed by a traditional dinner! That was tasty - slow cooked pork, chicken and veggies all slow cooked in the ground.
The next morning we decided to go to a spa after all (hard to pass up ;)), so we hit up the Polynesian Spa after breakfast and spent a comfortable hour soaking in the various mineral pools there. After that we drove to Te Puia to check out the thermal park and viewed bubbling mud pools, hot rocks, and a pair of geysers that were spouting nearly 50 feet high just as we arrived - very cool! They also have a Maori house there with some wood artisans. We took part in another Maori welcome ceremony and show. This time, I (Xavier) volunteered to be the chief.
What I didn't mention before is the Maori tribe would do a welcome war dance when another tribe arrived to determine if they came in peace or to fight. So if the chief laughed or looked away, the Maori at our hangi site would have traditionally attacked us due to this sign of disrespect. Fortunately I kept my cool as the local Maori warrior chief did their wide-eyed, tongue-protruding war dance which ended in a gift of a leaf from a native plant, symbolic of peaceful welcome of our tribe...phew!
Our first order of business was to book our "adventures" in Rotorua. Apparently there is a strong Maori culture still present here, so we decided to sign up for one of the traditional hangis, which is a show of Maori song & dance as well as their traditional pit BBQs. These reminded us of Hawaiian luaus. We booked a tour through the i-site in Rotorua, which included a free trip to the Rotorua museum or a spa. We chose the museum as we thought it might be useful to get some local culture.
A side note about visiting NZ - nearly every town has at least 1 i-site, which are useful information centers with free maps, hostel/hotel/motel listings, and other tourist services. We used these quite a bit to get useful info and local knowledge of the towns we visited since we had done very little planning prior to arriving in NZ.
We first hit the Rotorua museum housed in an old spa center considered to be a 'healing center' in the old days including treatments such as scary electric baths. Since we had just a short time before our Maori hangi, we skipped the last half of the tour describing the details of the spa in the old days and focused on the much more stimulating Maori exhibits describing the history of how the Moari arrived, how they survived, and artifacts of their culture, weapons, jewelry, and homes. That part was pretty cool since we knew nothing about the Maori before arriving in NZ.
Our hangi show started with an entertaining bus ride to the site. Our driver was a friendly and funny Maori who liked to poke fun at Ozzie rugby. On the way, we learned each bus load of people (our 'tribe') had to pick a "chief" to represent our "tribe" for the welcome ceremony. There was an Aussie couple honeymooning so our bus driver picked the lucky groom to be our chief, who was responsible to receive the Maori welcome and lead us into the village. There, we saw Maori doing traditional activities like war dances, songs, and then we went into their main house for a song & dance show followed by a traditional dinner! That was tasty - slow cooked pork, chicken and veggies all slow cooked in the ground.
The next morning we decided to go to a spa after all (hard to pass up ;)), so we hit up the Polynesian Spa after breakfast and spent a comfortable hour soaking in the various mineral pools there. After that we drove to Te Puia to check out the thermal park and viewed bubbling mud pools, hot rocks, and a pair of geysers that were spouting nearly 50 feet high just as we arrived - very cool! They also have a Maori house there with some wood artisans. We took part in another Maori welcome ceremony and show. This time, I (Xavier) volunteered to be the chief.
What I didn't mention before is the Maori tribe would do a welcome war dance when another tribe arrived to determine if they came in peace or to fight. So if the chief laughed or looked away, the Maori at our hangi site would have traditionally attacked us due to this sign of disrespect. Fortunately I kept my cool as the local Maori warrior chief did their wide-eyed, tongue-protruding war dance which ended in a gift of a leaf from a native plant, symbolic of peaceful welcome of our tribe...phew!
Labels: honeymoon, Julie, Maori, New Zealand, Rotorua, Xavier
posted by Xavier at 3:50 PM
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