Advertisement
Mitai Maori village
preparing our dinner in the ground(I apologize for the lack of quality in the pictures for this blog. They were taken at night because that's when our show was.)
Today was fantastic. We left Hunterville and headed for Rotorura. We learned that here it is NOT safe to walk off of designated walking paths because there are too many active geothermic fields, as well as active volcanoes! As we were driving we could see the steam rising where it was being released and we could smell the sulfur.
We made good time so we stopped at a grocery store and café in a small town. Once back on the road, a motorcycle passed me and a small stone flew from his tire and chipped our windshield. Shitsicles. (We didn’t get the extra insurance) Soooo once we got to Rotorua we had to go to our car rental company, and switch cars again so they could fix the chip. They gave us the same car type and color, at least.
All of the towns here have Maori names and are difficult and sometimes amusing for us to pronounce. For example, there was a town we went by that sounds like, “you-no-poo” and we just
Mitai Maori village
preparing our dinner in the ground got to Rotorua, which we call “Roto-Rooter”. Sick, I know. We’ve also found out through experience and word of mouth that New Zealanders have a dark sense of humor (which I LOVE but mom finds appalling). They show things on TV that are so abruptly violent and inappropriate that your eyes bulge and your jaw drops. And their street signs!! “sleep BEFORE you drive” and it shows a guy sleeping in his bed which crashed into a tree, throwing the guy to his obvious death. “drink DrIvE” with “DIE” in all caps and red. The messages are great and seem effective, but I can just see someone complaining about how they shouldn’t be allowed because they’re too violent for our youth to see. Politics again, sorry.
One itsy bitsy teenyyyyyyy thing that annoys me here: they spell “defense” with a “c” here. Okay, I’ll drive on the left and ask how to get to Waipapa (why papa) and Kaka (ca-ca)…but really? Defence?
Complaining aside, we saw an AMAZING show tonight. We learned all about the Mitai Maori village, ate dinner with them, took a tour of their forest with glow worms, eels, native (and captive) New Zealand wildlife,
Mitai Maori village
preparing our dinner in the ground and we saw KIWIS!!!!!!!! This time we felt much better about seeing the Kiwis. They were in an incredibly well-designed habitat and they were zigzagging around with each other, finding food and calling out. I think I mentioned this before, but their body is about the size of a basketball and their beak is about 6-8 inches long. They are also flightless and their eggs that they lay are enormous for their size. Ladies: imagine giving birth to a 36 pound baby. Ouchies.
Ashley
Advertisement
Tot: 0.073s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0414s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
