Days 6-10 Rotorua to Wellington

We stayed 3 nights in Rotorua. At times the smell is quite strong but everyone says you get used to it. Well I never did! However we had such an interesting 3 days it made up for the rotten eggs. We went to Te Puia which has geysers, mud pools and Maori meeting houses (marae). The Maori who took us in were very strict on protocol although she had a job on her hands explaining to Koreans and Chinese visitors not to take photos,to take off their shoes and generally shut up. It was good fun though after the solemn greeting part and I even got Dave to have a go at the Haka so wait for thenext All Blacks match and watch him join in!

What is great about Rotorua is that we saw so much that we will never see anywhere else. The coloured sediments from the hot springs and mud pools, seeing boiling water bubbling up out of the ground and watching geysers spouting huge plumes of steam. Te Puia also has weaving and carving schools that were set up in the 1920s to keep alive traditional Maori crafts. At the carving school we spoke to one of the young students. They are sponsored by their tribe to undertake the 3 year course. They then return to their tribe and pass on their skills to others and hope to be given restoration work on the Maori buildings belonging to the tribe. These buildings are very heavily hand carved and need regular upkeep.

The next day we went to Waimangu about 15 miles outside Rotorua. This was just wonderful. It's an area that was created when a volcano erupted in the 1840s and subsequent eruptions in the late 1880s and 1910s. Tarawera mountain is the dormant volcano. Before the eruption in1886, this area was rolling scrub covered hills with no surface hydrothermal activity. Then in 1886 a line of craters from the volcano all the way along the Waimangu valley was formed by violent eruption. This event completely destroyed all plant, animal and bird life in the whole of the area. All the vegetation we saw is a result of plant recolonisation since that date. In 1900-1904 the worlds largest geyser was active in the area and in 1917 part of the valley erupted sending up a surge of steam and debris that destroyed property and killed 4 sightseers.

We
did an easy 3km walk down the side of the valley past volcanic lakes, bubbling pools, steam
holes, silica terraces and fantastic views. Every few hundred metres there were information points and the whole day was wonderful. At the end of the walk there is a bus back -even better! For 2 hours we hardly saw a soul and walked to the sounds of tree insects, birdsong and the rather ominous gurgling and bubbling of the pools.

Back in Rotorua we went to the lakeside Maori community our student was from. There was a Marae, various small buildings and an Anglican church that was stunning. Right on the edge of the lake, it was beautifully carved on the inside and to one side has a huge clear window with an engraved figure of Christ wearing a Maori cloak. It is engraved so that as you sit in the pew it looks like he is walking on the waters of the lake.

Part 2 to follow.....