BRAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!

(The title is evocative of a Maori tribal sound, said with one's tongue sticking out!)

We've almost finished our day in Rotorua!

We started off our day with brunch at a cafe in Tauranga (where we stayed last night) called the Sunrise Cafe. It was amazing! Corey had blueberry waffles and I had a chickpea and lentil burger with kumara chips (a Tahitian sweet potato that was brought to New Zealand). We both loved our meals!

From there, we walked around Mt. Maunganui, just northwest of town. Some really beautiful views!

That put us at about 11:30, so we hopped in the car and headed south for Rotorua. Today, we learned that we could go SIX minutes without taking a picture of something while driving, as opposed to the standard 1-3 minutes. Seriously though... New Zealand is pretty breathtaking. :) The first thing you notice pulling into town here (besides the giant lake) is the smell of sulfur! Rotorua is very geothermally active, and is quite... potent!

After checking into our hotel (which has a small mineral pool out the window of our bathroom), we went to Skyline Skyrides, or a gondola ride up a mountain I have no chance at pronouncing! Try your best at "Mt. Ngongotaha" -- really! :) We took a gondola up, looked around from the top, and then drove a luge down a track on the mountain. This was very similar to the luge that I did coming down from the Great Wall of China, except the track in China seemed MUCH safer! This one didn't really have many guard rails. Regardless of that, it was a lot of fun! We took a chair lift back up, and then returned to the start via another gondola.

We drove back through Rotorua, and stopped at a strip of land in the center of town called Kuirau Park. It's sort of like Rotorua's version of Central Park, except much smaller, geothermally active, and somehow, stinkier! There are lots of geothermal vents with mudpots and steaming pools of water. There are even public pools you can soak in.

We left there at sundown (a little after 5 PM--happy Winter Solstice from the southern hemsphere), and came back to the hotel, where we promptly turned around and left for our Maori concert and hangi (traditional meal cooked in an earthen oven heated by hot stones). Our tour guide from Auckland helped us book the tickets, which ended up saving us about $40-50! Before dinner, the host welcomed us all, and asked what country everyone was from. I think we had people from: the US, the UK, Israel, South Africa, India, Canada, Australia, French Polynesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Spain). He said some sort of greeting to each group in their native tongue! It was simply impressive at first, but it turned into a sort of way of tying people from so many different backgrounds and histories all together! We left the dining tent and walked around the property a bit. We saw Maori warriors row in a giant canoe (10 m long!) while chanting and rowing methodically. We then went and watched an hour Maori concert, where traditional songs, dances, weapons, and accessories were shown to us. Of particular import were the hongi (nose to nose contact signifying the exchange of the breath of life) and the haka (war dance). Everything was really fascinating to watch! Dinner was incredible. We had about 10 different dishes, all of which I tried! The smokiness added to the chicken, lamb, potatoes, and kumara from the hot stones was unlike anything I've ever tasted; it was excellent!  For dessert, there was a chocolate log, trifle, and some tropical fruit. We closed the evening with a walk around the rest of the property. We saw the spring (I think it was the product of a confined aquifer!) that provides the Mitai tribe 5 million gallons of water/year. It was probably the clearest water Corey or I have ever seen! Finally, we walked a path where we saw some glow worms (which were a small glimpse of what is coming on the 24th)!

We got back to the hotel and soaked in our mineral spa with the bottle of chardonnay we bought from the winery outside of Auckland! Now it's time to get some sleep. We'll go to the Agrodome tomorrow before leaving the Rotorua area and heading towards Taupo. There might be a bungee cord in my future tomorrow!