A Living Maori Village Among Steaming Fissures & Pools

After much deliberation we decided to forego visiting Hobbiton (Matamata) in favour of spending more time in Rotorua.  Everyone we seemed to meet implied that the tour of the shire was expensive and not very worthwhile, so we gave it a pass.  I knew I would see Mordor in a few days so resolved my guilt (as an LOTR super-fan)with that.

When we entered Rotorua proper we could instantly smell the wafts of sulphur (aka rotten eggs) and saw plumes of steam everywhere we looked. Since we have been in the country for a week by now and still didn't know much about their aboriginal (Maori) culture, we opted to go the to a living Maori village in Rotorua called Whakarewarewa. 

This town was well worth the $41 price as we had a fully guided tour of Maori life, a cultural performance, and their steamed cuisine for lunch called 'hangi'.

The town itself was blazing hot as there were hot fissures (fumaroles) of steam and geothermal activity everywhere amongst the buildings.  Maori people settled there over a hundred years ago because they were drawn to the heat and energy given off from the earth's core and the heat under the homes would keep the homes warm throughout the winter.  They were able to use this energy for their daily lives including using it like an oven to steam cook their 'hangi' and the hot pools were used to boil foods such as corn. 

The main pool (pictured above) had a Maori name which meant murderous rippling water as it is so pretty to look at it but to jump into this bottomless pool would surely be death as temperatures can get upwards of 130C!

The water from the hot pools were also channeled into pools that the community would use for bathing at the end of the day when the water had cooled  down sufficiently.  As you can tell, it wasn't nearly cool enough yet!

We took a very hot walk around the neighbouring geothermal area to see many lakes, fissures and boiling mud pools.  It was neat to see such natural energy constantly brewing.  We were also able to see the Pohutu geyser from one side of the village, which is a continuous natural geyser that can shoot steam/ & water up to 60ft high.

We quite enjoyed the cultural show of singing and dancing with sticks and small round beanbags to show the flight of their native birds and butterflies.  The warriors also came forward and performed the haka, which is a traditional warrior dance meant to scare the enemy as they use a lot of exaggerated eye and mouth movements.  We knew of this from watching the NZ rugby team - the All Blacks - perform this before each match when we watched in the UK.

Our last experience of this unique culture was to try their Hangi. IT was basically root vegetables (carrots, potatoes, kumara/sweet potato), corn, cabbage, corn beef and chicken.  The flavours were very natural, and the gravy they used on the fall-off-the-bone chicken was fantastic. 

We ended this day by stopping at Zorb Rotorua, to have a go at this NZ invention - zorbing!  Essentially you get into an 11ft ball with a bit of water, and the ball rolls down the hill while you roll around inside.  Syd and I both chose to do the zorb zydro coarse, which basically goes down the hill in a zigzag pattern so its quite disorienting - you don't know when you are up or down!  It took about 2 minutes to get down the hill and it was soooo fun!  Syd was dubious at first whether it would be worth the $40 price tag- and later admitted that it totally was!

Astrid.