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Published: November 26th 2005
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Marae in Rotorua
These are meeting houses for Maori people. I thnk they are so beautiful. Many times, my Maori class would be held in a marae similar to this one. Hi Everyone,
Thanks for keeping up with my blog! I have been a little busy and have made some entries before others- leaving it all out of chronological order. My Apologies! Keep on reading them and checking out the photos though, there are still several left to update.
When I was visiting Te Papa museum, I met Faith and Poiharare,the lovely maori ladies who worked at Te Puia, the maori carving institute in Rotorua.
They invited me to come visit them up in Rotorua, and since Rachel and I were so close while in Taupo, we headed that way after saying goodbye to all our friends. (Sort of to take our minds off missing our buddies!)
From Taupo, we caught a 6:45 am bus to Rotorua...which was very diffiuclt due to all of our luggage! Luckily our bus driver was really kind, and dropped us off directly at a hostel in town, so we did not have to drag it all thourhg the town looking for a place to stay. We made it to "Funky Gren Voyager Hostel" and were delighted when we saw Corrina (our friend from welly...and taupo!) run out the dorr of the
hostel to greet us. We all met for lunch at Hell's Pizza, and had a last hangout session before saying goodbye (again)...Corrina was on her way to Auckland!
After Corrina left we tried to settle into our room at the hostel and organise our luggage. Homesikcness (for Wellington) set in and we really missed our friends, so when Ngaire called us we were more than excited. The first time we were in rotorua, the weather was awful and it pretty much was not that exciting. So we felt that giving it a second chance was called for...however, its not even worth a second chance! We wandered around the town for some hours, lacking in things to see and do department. One neat thing wsa the "St. Faith's" church by the lake. It was a church from the 180's, the time when many European missionaries came to NZ to convert the Maori( dammit the chrisitian missionaries!!cant let native peoples have their own belief...) Anyway, the Church was beautiful, all wood, and stained glass. It was unique, because it integrated Maori art, architecture, and lanuage with traditional chrisitan Church architecture, text, and stained glass. Unfortunately we were unable to get a
photo because it is tapu (which is loosely translated as sacred, from maori to english)
The next day we visited Faith and Poihare at Te Puia. From our hostel we walked about 25 minutes, got lost, and finally made our way to the entrance. We were greetd by the girls, and then taken on a VIP tour of the whole property. The ladies took us to the Geyser at the Whakarewarewa Valley. According to tribal history, this was the place where the Goddesses of fire, Te Pupu and Te Hoata, emerged from the earth’s core, inhaling and exhaling, creating the geysers, hot springs and mud pools.
From there, we visited the Carving and Weaving schools, where students come from all over NZ, each represteing a different maori iwi
(tribe). After lunch at the cafe, we headed over to the Kiwi House. Kiwis are nocturnal, and very few and far betwen in NZ, they once neared extinction. Most are living in protected wildlife sanctuaries such as Kapiti or Karori. SO, seeing one in the wild or even at all is quite rare. The Te Puia Kiwi house is great because it creates nighttime for the birds inside, while it
is during the day outside, so visitors can see the brids awake. We saw two little kiwis, Kenny and Colorodo. Apparently there was a U. of Colorodo tour group there when the bird was hatched thus naming him Colorodo. After touring the property, The girls gave us a flax weaving lesson on how to make roses. Surprisingly they are really easy! After our lesson, we had to say goodye, but I assured them I will be back in NZ one day again, and will stop by for another visit!
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We decided that traveling the North Island would be virtually impossible with the amount of luggage we had to deal with...unless we rented a car. SO, we wroked to find a good deal and started to plan our route to get out of rotorua.
Once we had a rental car, we were able to telephone the Farmers and set up which farm we wanted to Work on. When that was secured we settled in for our last night in Rotorua, and slept soundly knowing that we were going to continue our travels in the morning!
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Ngaire
non-member comment
Hello Shelly You guys rock man, I am glad to hear that Rotorua (The fart of New Zealand) went well for the two of you. I missed you terribly while you were there. Love to ya!!