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Mud Boy
Alan said of the mud baths:
''It smells like shit, it looks lke shit, and we're next to the toilets - what do you think we're bathing in?''. If anyone tells you that Rotorua has an unbearable stink - then don’t believe them. We think it’s fine. I mean, it’s nowhere near as bad as the smell in our house the morning after we’ve had a night on the curry and lager, and that’s a fact. Mind you - that might be a completely unbearable stench to most people, so perhaps it’s actually rank in Rotorua. Hmmm. Well, moving swiftly on…. Ahem ahem ahem……..
So, we got here two days ago and we’ve really had a fab time since we arrived. There is heaps to do and see and it has a nice busy vibe. The landscape is AMAZING - almost literally out of this world (if it was out of this world which it’s obviously not) and outwith the centre of town there are tons & tons of sites with volcanic and thermal activity, making it feel like a set from Dr Who, or maybe Space 1999. Along the side of the roads there are vents with steam pouring forth, and frothy white clouds emanate in vertical bursts all around the perimeter of the city. It’s so HOT, it’s COOL. That was a crap statement, wasn’t it.
Since Monday, we’ve been to visit two of the key Thermal Sites in this area; Hell’s Gate and Wai-O-Tapu, which between them have an excellent range of examples of all the types of scenery you’d be hoping to catch sight of here.
HELL’s GATE:
This place is a site featuring a lot of boiling mud holes and hot water lakes and waterfalls. It is also a Spa which offers a range of Mud based treatments, mud baths and a revitalizing outdoor hot sulphur pool. It gained its modern name when George Bernard Shaw visited in the early 1900s. When he saw all the rising gases, sulphur craters, throbbing mud and bubbling pools he claimed that this must be the Gates of Hell. The story goes that he got on so well with the Maori guardians of the site that the name stuck. And y’know, there are some superb sounds here too. There are gurgling, hissing, spitting, bubbling, popping noises everywhere you walk. Fantastic.
The site claims to have a 2.5km walk round various fizzing pools and bush, however it only took us about an hour to stroll round, stopping very regularly to take photos, so we think
it’s probably more like 1km. There are lots of bridges over boiling matter, and you have to stick to the path or you get thrown out. You really wouldn’t want to stray from the marked out areas however as the localized landscape is just a little bit intimidating. Put it this way - you wouldn’t want to get lost in here at night without a torch!
After we did our walk round we headed back into the buildings for our mud bath. I don’t know what we expected , but what we got was a big outdoor rectangular bath thing which comfortably fit two people. It wasn’t actually filled right up with mud, however there was plenty of gunky brown mud stuff at the bottom which we dug up with our hands and smeared on our exposed skin. It was a good laugh, but we stopped smirking when we had to have a FREEZING cold shower to clean ourselves up before heading into the hot sulphur pool. We now know the meaning of BALTIC. And we had to shower for ages as the mud was reluctant to shift. Bbbrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!
Next up was the wood carving. This is an
And Hey Presto - we're clean again!
Actually, we felt MEGA relaxed after the Mud Spa. optional free thing to do, and we got talking to Benjamin the resident Maori wood carver. He gave Shaz a fern to carve with a chisel and rubber hammer, and Alan got a Kiwi bird. It was lot’s of fun and felt a bit like being back at school.
WAI-O-TAPU
This is the other major park near Rotorua offering an excellent range of natural scary volcanic induced spurty things. This park is much more colourful than Hell's Gate - less mud pools, but more poisonous hot lakes and craters. This site is most famous for the geyser which goes off each morning at precisely 10:15am (with a little help from some poured in soap powder to keep it regular) going by the name of Lady Knox Geyser. Incientally, NZ peeps all mispronounce ''Geyser''. They say ''Guy-ser'' which makes us think of Halloween every time we hear it. We all know its ''Geezer''.
The mineral colours in this park are translated as follows:
Yellow/Primrose: = Sulphur
White: = Silica
Red-brown: = Iron Oxide
Purple: = Manganese Oxide
Orange: = Antimony
Green: = Colloidal Sulphur / Ferrous Salts
Black: = Sulphur and Carbon.
We’d never heard of Colloidal Sulphur
Shazdevil
We love these things that you stick your head through to get a photo. before so checked it out on the interweb and found it’s being tested for treatment in breast cancer. Imagine that!
Anyways - we won’t go on and on about the thermal pools here as you can see for yourself from the photos how nifty this area is so we’ll go onto our next subject…….
MAORI HANGI & CONCERT
One of the things we wanted to do was visit a traditional Maori evening of entertainment, mainly to see the war dances and customary dresses and rituals. We booked this for earlier on tonight and went along to see what it was all about. Part of the evening is a Maori meal called a Hangi (pronounced HUNGI) which is supposed to be cooked in the ground. The deal is that a hole should be dug and a fire built inside. Next, rocks are to be placed in the hole and when they are hot enough, baskets of meat, fish and veggies are lowered in on top, then covered with earth and left for a few hours for the food to steam cook. The one we attended tonight was a more conventional affair, with the meat being steamed on top of
heated rocks in a big metal oven. Not quite the same thing, which is a shame as we’d been looking forward to it. The food that was served up to us (buffet style) was certainly varied and there was plenty of it, however it was not unusual in any way at all.
Fortunately, the Maori performance was ace. It was highly entertaining to watch the talented performers dancing and singing in their ancestors’ style, wearing all the tribal garb. The women do this marvellous dance with swinging balls on ropes - it was very well co-ordinated. At one point the performers got some of the audience up to do the Hakka and some ball swinging - we hid under the table at this point to avoid mortification. There was about ten men and ten women on the stage trying to copy dance moves as instructed by the Maori folk, and we were instantly transported in our minds to a 1970s episode of the Generation Game. Much, much funny-ness. One of the Maori women performers totally reminded us of the headmistress in Grange Hill - ‘Bridget’. She was the spitting image, but the photo we took of her didn’t work
Sodom & Gomorrah, Hell's Gate
These are 'Inferno Pools' with an average temperature of between 105 and 110 degrees celcius, and depths of between 8 and 20 metres. The water is so hot due to the mineral content which accelerates the boiling point. out so we can’t post the evidence. Doch!
2 other points of interest worth a mention from Rotorua:
1) Curry from Indian Star - very nice Jalfreizie, but the Vindaloo was not hot.
2) The Polynesian Spa in the centre of town: Spa baths were great - all outdoor landscaped affairs, with lots of lovely spiky plants and nice stonework, overlooking Lake Rotorua at Sulphur Bay, but Shaz got a back massage and it was a bit rubbish. That said, we got ‘money off’ vouchers for booking our Maori experience through the Visitors Info Centre so it didn’t matter too much as it was so cheap.
Well guys and gals - that’ll have to do you for this update. We’ll keep you all posted on our next steps as we start heading back to Aus next week…….. watch this space…..
Bye for now,
The Rotten Eggs. xxxx
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Amanda
non-member comment
Dances With Sticks
Is she any relation to Dances With Wolves? Hahaha ... okay, bad joke but great blog.