Rotorua

Feb. 11 / 12^th (Rotorua)

City of controversy..."Hell on Earth"

Our next destination of thermal adventure and activity brings us to the Historic & controversial city of Rotorua. Every once in awhile by exploring with out an agenda you can be rewarded with an outstanding cultural experience by surprise. Ours came in the form of unexpectedly stumbling into the authentic Maori village of “Tehokowhitu-A-TU”. This village is inhabited by the “Whakarewarewa” tribe. One of the eight original Maori tribes of New Zealand dating back some 1500 years! To this day you must be of Whakarewarewa ancestry to be a resident of Tehokowhituatu. What makes this particular village so controversial is the proximity of the village to Rotorua itself and the uniqueness of the thermal activity that the area and surroundings possess. This village is located with in the City of Rotorua and the local government has taken a portion of the villages thermal geyser areas (some of the most active), for its own and turned it into a tourist attraction of Rotorua. This in itself has added to many heated political discussions which have recently escalated as admission proceeds that are being generated from this attraction are no longer being directed back to the village of Tehokowhituatu. Well that is the condensed version of a discussion that I had with a few of the locals as well as the tour guide that helped with our village experience. Once again please see the pictures for further unexplained narration of this very historic Rotorua village. It is worth mentioning that the many children of this village have come up with a rather ingenious way of making money. As the entrance to this village is accessible only by walking across a bridge, as soon as you step foot on the bridge you will be inundated with calls from below the bridge, where the children are ready to entertain you by asking you to through coins into the water diving for them, quickly returning to the surface stuffing the coins into their cheeks, like human chipmunks before returning below for more. All in all a very interesting enjoyable experience was had by all. Our last day in Rotorua (second last in NZ), was spent in style…a day at the Hells Gate Waiora SPA! We all thoroughly enjoyed soaking in mineral baths as well as playing in mud! Jacqueline and I also indulged ourselves with a 30 min. massage…my experience ended up much more therapeutic than Jacqueline’s, as I managed to snag a masseuse with extensive sports medicine massage experience while Jacque lines masseuse must of specialized in “fluffy” needle point injuries…she doesn’t like to talk about it much! After our SPA experience we all walked the grounds of the Hell’s Gate thermal park, very similar to the “Craters of the Moon” hike in Taupo. The boys were able to participate in a demonstration exercise in traditional Maori wood carving. After our Spa / Thermal Park adventure we returned to the caravan and continued to re-pack everything into our eight (8) suitcases and four (4) carry ons for our plane to our next adventure in Australia!