Where else, but Rotorua next!

If you’re in the Bay of Plenty, you HAVE to do Rotorua! 8 years ago I took over a video of New Zealand. It must be bung now with the number of times they have watched it! They loved the idea of boiling mud and geysers. So of course we had to take them to Wakarewarewa. Well that’s where I thought we were headed. Turns out that it’s now split into two companies, and the one with all the good stuff is called……something else Maori.

So we negotiated our way in. Always to have a fast talker along in times of spending money. Mum got me and her in at the local rate, so we paid $5 instead of $25! Woo hoo! We wandered along the path, and the kiwi house was the first sight. We walked in, and right at the front of the glass, was a kiwi digging for food. Now I’ve been to kiwi houses before and rarely get to see one that close!

Further along the path was the boiling mud and water. Always interesting to watch it go “plop plop”! Around the corner were the geysers. They sat quietly for 20 mins, so we decided to keep going. As we walked around the corner, we heard this WOOSH! Rushing back to the geysers, there were 2 of them going full force! We watched for about 20mins before we dragged them away – had to get to our next destination on time.

The afternoon was spent at the Agrodome. We went to the sheep show, where they had about 15 different types of sheep (who knew there were that many?!), and they sheared a sheep plus got the working farm dogs in for a demonstration. From there we went on a farm tour. I didn’t know the Agrodome was an actual working farm. It’s huge! We got to taste some organic kiwifruit wine and clover honey which is produced there. They also let us feed deer, sheep (with lambs!), alpacas, and one shy llama that just watched from the other side of the tractor.

In the evening, we went to a hangi and a show. The hangi can’t be cooked properly when cooking commercially, and it definitely didn’t taste like one, but the food was still good. Lots of roast lamb…..yum!
The show was more of a demonstration of different things they do, like poi, long sticks, short sticks and, of course, the haka. Inger had a go at the short poi and Mogens did a great show of trying the haka! Very entertaining for all!