Day 167 - Rotorua & Te Po Maori cultural evening, North Island - Saturday 31st March 2012

We spent our morning lazing in the hot pools and after having scrambled eggs on toast by the boiling spring, 12pm came and it was time to check out. This campsite is by far the best we've been to and to think we wouldn't have even known it was there if someone hadn't put a star next to it in our camp guide map book!

We spent an hour driving along route 5 until we reached Rotorua. Our friend Danny Wells had told us that Rotorua was awesome but smelt of eggs, he was right on both counts… for once!! We had a Maori cultural evening booked for 6pm and so planned to spend the afternoon wondering around the town. After a few hours of looking around little Maori churches and meeting houses, checking out the random boiling pools and geysers that were randomly splattered around the town and looking in the shops, we decided it was time for coffee and so headed to one of the town's cafes for coffee and cake. With the money we've spent on coffee since we've been away we could have probably bought our own plantation somewhere!

6pm was fast approaching and so we headed to Te Po for our evening of Maori culture. Once there our host for the evening lead us to the meeting house and explained the plans for the evening. Firstly he chose us a tribe leader from our group - a Romanian dentist called Carter! Then out of the meeting house came the women and men from the Maori tribe - all singing, dancing and doing the big scary eye thing, called the powhiri welcoming ceremony, and then suddenly one of the men ran up and did some scary type haka moves before placing a leaf on the floor in front of Carter. This apparently shows he is welcoming us in and so Carter did as he was told and picked up the leaf, touched noses with the Maori guy twice and then backed away. Once this was all done we all proceeded to go into the meeting house but not before we checked out the hangi dinner for the night - all different types of meat and veg that was being cooked underground by the hot stones and steam created by the thermal heat of the ground! In the meeting house and we all sat down ready for the cultural singing and dancing and of course the haka. It was great and we sat quite content taking pictures and taking in the show - that was until they suddenly starting inviting the women up to do a practice run of the dancing and the men up to do a practice run of the haka. Ad and I both shrank into our chairs at this point - we were much happier watching than doing!!

With the show done, we headed to the dining room for the hangi feast - well it certainly didn't disappoint! There was food galore and everything from seafood to meat to veg to salad and loads of yummy deserts. Needless to say Ad and I completely stuffed our faces!

When dinner was done we were escorted out to the park and given hot chocolates whilst we watched to see if the pohutu geyser would erupt. It being a natural wonder decided it didn't want to play and instead just gave off a lot of steam and mist. We didn't mind though, it was lovely sitting on the warm stones, drinking hot chocolate under the stars of Rotorua. It was a great night and really nice to see some of the original culture of NZ!