Day 82: Smelly Rotorua‏

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Another scenic walk to get our day off to a good start! The walk took us out to the Ruaki forrest & caves and we climbed through some little tunnels. We arrived in Rotorua around midday and had the afternoon to explore the city. Rotorua is one of three geothermal hotspots in the world, everywhere you look steam is coming out of the ground! We even saw a bit of pavement cracked with bubbling water coming out, scary stuff. These hotspots are usually mud pools with a horrible sulphur smell - the city smells like this permanently. We did a 3km walking tour around the city, aside from the smell the lake and museum buildings are beautiful. In the evening we went to a mauri village and concert with a huge buffet dinner. On the way to the village the bus driver had to pick a chief, he was looking for three things in a chief... 1) Brave 2) Intelligent 3) Handsome and oddly he picked James! tee hee

Bailey's bit: Being the chief I had to take part in the welcoming ceremony with 2 other 'chiefs' where at the village entrance 4 warriors came rushing out grunting, eyes bulging and sticking their tongues out while waving there weapons just a matter of inches away from our faces. After accepting their peace offering of a fern leaf we were accepted into the village where we were shown all the various activities and games that took place in the villages such as warrior training and carving. We were then led to see out dinner being lifted from the hangi, an underground oven similar to the lovo in Fiji and then to a concert of singing, dancing and the haka! Our meal was a huge buffet of meat, vegetables and most importantly dessert including the New Zealand created (apparently not the Australian) pavlova. I wasn't finished with my chiefly duties as I was dragged up and had to perform the haka...badly!

Daily mileage: 5(am) had a wander up and down the main (and pretty much only) road through Waitomo and finished with a few laps of the rugby field.
3(pm) had a run round the mud pool park not as big as I expected and the legs were a little tired!

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