Another late morning mainly due to the late night last night. Alex woke in the night again and we were also awoken by the rain. The rain was very heavy. I woke, had coffee and read my book until Elizabeth stirred. The weather outside was pretty rotten so we did not rush to get ready. Having said that some of us were more active than others which caused some tension.

We decided to be very British in our approach to this and carry on regardless. The plan was to do a supermarket trip followed by a visit to Te Puia. We missed all the supermarkets, so we did things the other way around.

We arrived there at about 11:30 and joined the 12 guided tour, well worth it ! We saw Pohutu geyser erupt from the side and sadly it was obscured by the stea. After this we walked to a boiling mud pool, very impressive but apparently it is not as impressive as it can be as a dry spell had dried areas out. Elizabeth sang through quite a bit of the tour. We then headed to the kiwi house, whilst making a quick escape with Elizabeth as she was beginning to create I saw a large kiwi up close and not quite personal. It is an impressive looking beast and egg size versus bidy size is pretty eye watering.

Moving onto the Maori area and she explained the significance of the Marea. You attend the Marea linked to you by your father. At the top is the head of an ancestor, the diagonals are the arms and the uprights are the legs. The Maori belief is that when you enter you are entering a living ancestor so you need to show respect by not eating, drinking, smoking or wearing your shoes within. To the left was a small school building, each village would have had one which taught life skills such as the use of medicinal plants etc. Nowadays it is the standard curriculum and you can take courses in Maori, or you can attend full immersion school where all classes are taught in it.

After this we moved to the carving school, they take 3 - 5 student every 3 years. The entry criteria insist you are 18 - 35, of Maori descent and male. It is a traditional school hence these criteria. It is interesting to here the perspective on this, it is not perceived as a sexist thing but as a respect of the culture and its respect of women. Being a carver is hard physical work.
The carvings are very intricate and the course it 3 years long.

The school of weaving across the way is very different in approach and tends to do short courses and community classes.

After the tour we had a café lunch followed by a good explore. Alex wanted to see more carving so we did that followed by a visit to a reconstructed Pa, it was well done and the spoken guide posts were informative. Talking of information Alex has a habit of asking you what a sign says and then as you get about 2 sentences in she goes, that's enough, stop now.

I wanted to see the geyser from another angle so we wandered to the lookout to wait. While we were waiting we were joined by group of Japanese tourists who were fascinated by Elizabeth and they insisted on taking photos of her and David. I think it was the blonde curly hair and blue eyes that did it. When they saw all four of us together we nearly ended up being the centre of attention rather than the geyser. Then a lot of German tourists joined us and they were VERY considerate and stood behind where we were sitting so we could see the geyser.

The geyser was very much better seen from this angle as the wind was blowing away the spray away from us and we could hear the roar far clearer. As we left the tour guide complimented us on the girls saying how beautiful they are and how well behaved. We walked through the spray which was surprisingly cold and went to the shop. I bought a couple of pieces in there.

This was followed by a supermarket trip and I stocked up for the next couple of days. It took some time so it was 5ish when we got back to the site. We all relaxed for a while before I made tea. As we ate tea we were watched by a large number of small birds which both girls quite enjoyed and Elizabeth kept talking to them.

After tea we went to the mineral baths, this was meant to relax them but instead turned them in monster raving loony babies ! We think it pushed them beyond tired. Elizabeth sang for a while but has now happily joined her sister in the land of nod.