Rotorua

We left around 9am from Mercury Bay heading towards Rotorua which is known as the smelliest town in New Zealand due to its volcanic activity. We arrived at around 2pm and we booked ourselves onto some activities in the evening, once that was done we went luging again in the hills. We had done luging before in Queenstown so we roughly knew what we were doing, but we didn't expect the course to be so good and much longer. We had 5 races each, so we set up a little Grand Prix style league board. 1st-4points 2nd-3points 3rd-2points 4th-1point. After 4 races it was down to either Ross M or Ross S to take the Championship, but in the end Ross Matthews nicked it after leading the race from the start J

Once we finished we got taken back to our hostel which was amazing, it had a geothermal heated swimming pool which means it is using the lava flows underground to keep it warm. We are not over exaggerating when we say that we were nearly fainting from the heat, it was really nice but you couldn't spend too long in it. We then chilled out for an hour or two before being picked up for our evening entertainment

At around 6pm we got picked up for our Maori Village Experience, once on the bus the driver asked for someone to volunteer to be our Chief of the tribe (as in for the people on our bus) and because Ross Matthews was sitting in the middle seat at the back everyone looked at him. He seriously didn't want to do it but eventually gave into peer pressure and became Chief; there were 2 other Chiefs from other buses which Ross had to touch noses with (strange). We then all walked into this small arena; the 3 Chiefs had to stand at the entrance while the rest of the tribe had to stand in a semi circle. The next part of the ceremony was to find the Head Chief who would be given a welcome gift to pick up off the floor. The local Maori then came out and danced, sang, screamed and made weird faces while staring Ross right in the face, after 5mins of this ritual they picked Ross to pick up the gift. Ross said it was the most intimidating thing he had ever had to go through, you're not allowed to laugh or smile because they can find it disrespectful. After the ritual a few people came up to Ross and asked him how he didn't laugh, his reply was "I didn't want to piss off a mad man with a stick" lol. We then walked around the Maori village while locals explained to us what each hut was used for.

Around 20mins later we walked into a small theatre and were given a small show which included singing, playing instruments, juggling and the famous Haka which was amazing. As Ross was picked as the Head Chief he then helped the Chief of the village uncover the underground oven where our dinner had been cooking 6hrs prior to our arrival in the village. The amount of heat and steam that came out of the hole was incredible. The food also looked amazing and we couldn't wait to tuck into it, so we soon all got seated in a massive banquet room and a Maori man started explaining how they made their food thousands of years ago. The food soon followed and everyone got in a long queue to get a portion of the delicious food, there was so much you could have gone up for 2nds, 3rds and even 4ths if you wanted it.

After dinner the 3 Chiefs had one last thing to do which was do the Haka in front of everyone in the banquet room, it was slightly embarrassing for Ross as he had no idea what the words or moves were but went along with it anyway. After that we all jumped back on the bus and headed back to our hostel for a night in the club under the hostel J