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December 20th 2008

Published: December 20th 2008

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DASH dave and ash

we snuck down to see this termal pool

Our days are winding down quickly in New Zealand.
We drove the long drive from Wellington to Rotorua. It is kind ofdifficult to pronounce the town names because a lot of them are Maori words and we never heard of the words before. Needless to say we butchered a lot of the town names.
Rotorua is basically known for smelling like rotten eggs. Kidding, they have a lot of thermal pools and they smell like rotten eggs!!!
It is amazing to see so many clouds of smoke rising from the ground and i still do not fully understand how and why they work.
One morning we went to a town that was burried back around 1880's after a volcano erupted.
It was cleverly named the Buried village!
We took a short tour and learned a lot about how MAori people lived, took care of eachother and some of the beliefs that they have.
then we headed over to Agrodome to see a sheep show. In the guide books it says go there for a laugh! So we did, plus I really like sheep since I never get to see them. There were I think 14 different breeds of sheep that got

another one up close and personal. the town we were in had tons of them

up on stage and the sheep dogs ran around for a bit, the emcee sheered a sheep for the audience which I thought looked cruel. After the show we got to go up on stage and pet the sheep and take pictures. The most interesting thing that happened here was there were a bunch of tourists from Korea. One girl got called up on stage and she was the Gold medal winner from Bejing in weightlifting. We didnt know if it was true or not, so we googled her and her picture was there...she was a gold medalist. Technically she is the worlds strongest girl right now, she got a few world records at the last games.
While in Rotorua we went to Te Puia to see a few geysers and at night got to see entertainers sing dance and feed us!
The night started with the official thing they do when people enter their house, they have to make sure you are coming in peace. Once we were allowed into their meeting house they sang, danced and even got the girls up on stage to dance and had the guys do a Haka.
They of course performed the Haka

see the rainbow and the leprechaun? kidding about the leprechaun

for us too, and after the performace they were drenched in sweat, it sure takes a lot of energy to do the Haka.
Then we drove a bit to a place Mount Maunguanui (you see how we had a hard time pronouncing this?) It was a small town but had a nice walk up a mountain to get 360 deg views of the town and water and was a nice walk.
Not far from there was a Hot water beach. You dug a hole for yourself around low tide times and the water is HOTT. i am not sure of the exact temperature but its HOT! and its like having a hot bath on the beach. It was crowded as you can see in the photos but it was a cool experience!
Then another little walk for the day to a place called Catherdral Cove. There are large limestone rocks here and of course a cove.
After spending time around Rotorua we headed back into Auckland for one more night and then we have our last long haul flight over to LA.
Its hard to believe that time is almost up on our retirement!!
Its also hard to believe its