Today we got up early and headed to a living thermal maori village called Whakarewarewa in time for the 10am tour. We bought combo tickets which included the tour, a traditional hangi lunch (food cooked in steam boxes in the ground) and a traditional maori cultural show (our first!).

Our guide for the tour was called Manoa and we learned the history of the village and about some of the famous guides - tours have been given there for hundreds of years. The village is so popular because it is on the edge of two huge geysers - The Prince of Wales and Kereru. All throughout the village there are steaming ponds, mudpools and places where steam rises out of the ground. There was a really strong sulphur (rotton eggs) smell which I found hard to handle! Manoa showed us around the village and explained how they use the pools and steam to cook and bathe themselves. She showed us 2 viewing platforms to watch the geysers - they 'erupt' about once an hour but it's not precise so you never know when it will happen. In the middle of the village is a deep, clear blue hot pool they call the champagne pool, as it looks very inviting...but she said that if a child fell into it the villagers would advise anyone NOT to jump in to try and save them as they would die trying.

After the tour we still had an hour until lunch so we went back to one of the viewing platforms. Just before we left there for lunch, the Prince of Wales geyser started to erupt, but we couldn't stay any longer so don't know if the Kereru did.

Lunch was an interesting experience....the food was chicken, potatoes and veg cooked in the thermal steam but we found it a bit bland - we're used to a bit more flavour!

After lunch we visited the gift shops and I bought myself a bargainous NZ tshirt. Then we went to see the mudpools before going back to the viewing platform again! At 2pm we went to the performance venue. The show was fantastic, performed by 8 members of the village (see picture). They performed the Haka and one of the men was very good at they scary facial expressions! They sang song other traditional songs, including a beautiful love song telling the story of 2 lovers whose parents disapproved.

The rest of the afternoon / evening we spent back at the site watching TV and using the computers. The boys hockey team were still there so we escaped to the small TV room after our dinner to drink our wine in peace!