5th February 2011

Today we left the hostel in Raglan at 7.45am and drove through to Waitomo where we did a tour called 'Spellbound' which takes you through glow worm caves and was pretty amazing :o)

There were four of us in the group - me, Livvy, Rose and Claire and it was great fun. Although it was boiling hot and I was wearing my jeans again! GAH!

After we did that, we went for some lunch and then walked 10 minutes down the road (in the blistering heat) to meet the bus. We got there to be faced by an argument happening between a couple on the bus and the driver because there was no room for them as they hadn't actually booked on! Not his fault but they were trying to make Stray pay for their accommodation!

It was all sorted and we were on our way to Maketu for our cultural Maori experience. It was about 1 million degrees on the bus. I ate a pie. We drove some more. People were melting. We drove. We stopped at the zorbing place. I wanted to zorb. It was closed. We drove.

We made it to Maketu to be greeted by 'Uncle Boy', the proprietor of this fine establishment. He gave us a talk and we ate some food. Then we went into another room where we had to take our shoes off and were greeted by a tribe and a 'warrior' who challenged our chief, Mark.

He accepted the leaf that was laid by the warrior and then we all had to 'hongi' with every person in the room, one by one. A hongi is where you greet someone with 'kia ora' and touch noses! So I rubbed noses with about 50 people tonight.

After that they performed some songs and routines for us - including the haka :o)

The guys went into another room to learn the haka and the women stayed to learn a poi routine. Poi is a ball on the end of some string that you have to swing around with one hand and catch with the other. And swing your hips at the same time. Well, I couldn't even catch the bloody thing let alone swing my hips at the same time!

Anyhoo, the guys came back in and performed the haka for us in nothing but their pants and a grass skirt thing! It was very funny. Then we performed our poi routine for them :o)

Now I am sitting in the main hall on a mattress on the floor, using free Wi-fi (for the first time since i've been in NZ) and being attacked by a million black bugs of various sizes.

And it's SO WARM.

Tomorrow we head to Rotorua and then on to Taupo!

Did you know that glow-worms are actually maggots?

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