Advertisement
Published: November 7th 2007
the cultural show
They had so much fun on stage!!We arrived in geothermal country late in the evening and the first thing that greeted us was the pungent smell of sulphur in the air. Nice! The next morning we decided to visit our first geothermal reserve at Te Puia. This attraction also hosted a Maori Cultural Show, which was very entertaining, probably because some of the performers seemed vaguely embarrassed about singing and dancing, which is a bit of a shame, you think they would be more proud of their traditions. It reminded us a bit of a school production in that sense, but the haka didn't disappoint, the one guy was really going for it with the old scary eye-ball and tongue action.
Our tour guide around the geysers was an unequally unenthusiastic Maori woman, who seemed a bit hungover by the way she was talking so slowly, like it was so much effort to even speak. Anyway, the boiling mud pools were amusing, plopping away, especially when our guide informed us that a month ago some silly git had climbed over the barrier to sample some mud and ended up with first degree burns! We marvelled at the Pothu Geyser, spouting a huge fountain of
Scary Haka!!
He made the little kids poop themselves!! steaming suphurous water into the air and then visited the traditional weaving and carving schools, which had some impressive artwork on display.
Gondola and Luge In the afternoon we jumped on the Skyrail to the top of the mountain overlooking Rotorua. It wasn't as high or steep as the mountain gondola in Queenstown, but it was still a lovely view and hurrah the luge was open! We had pre-purchased tickets for two rides on the luge, but it was so much fun we wished we had more goes. For anyone who hasn't seen a luge before, it's basically a winding track down a hill, which you travel down in individual carts, controlling your speed (or not!) by pulling back on a lever. We went down the Intermediate and Advanced tracks and they were hilarious. The Intermediate had nice sweeping bends and dips, and we really got some speed up, flying round the corners on two wheels. The Advanced had a tighter course with a number of crazy steep cambers to add to the fun. When we got to the bottom, we jumped on the chairlift shouting "again! again!". As we travelled back up the mountainside we were amused by
a couple of kids speeding down the track, one slightly out of control round the bend, shouting "Shiiiiittttt!" as his wheels left the ground and he flew past his mate.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.093s; Tpl: 0.017s; cc: 11; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0297s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Debra
non-member comment
Geyser
Geyser enjoyed the action? Great pics of the big blowy.