Rotorua, New Zealand

Tuesday and Wednesday, 6 and 7 February 2008

Known as the "Sulphur City", Rotorua is another town popular for its geysers, hot springs, mud pools etc. We visit the Museum of Art & History, which is in a building that was once an internationally famous spa resort. The remnants of the original bath chambers are eerie, with instruments, wires and other contraptions that wouldn't look out of place in a torture chamber.

We go to a Maori concert at the Tamaki Maori Village. Before we enter the village, the tourists' chiefs (poor sods selected at random from our bus) must stand in front of their tribe, while the village's warriors do a ferocious dance in front of them, complete with eye-bulging, tongue-showing and guttural roaring (see here). The tourist chiefs are made of sterner stuff than that and don't flinch, so we are allowed into the village. Inside we learn about the story of the Maori people's first voyage in their canoe or "waka" from Tahiti to New Zealand and watch a concert. Afterwards we have a "hangi" - a dinner cooked in the traditional Maori style which involves digging a 1 metre deep hole in the ground and creating a natural pressure cooker using local volcanic rock. We are told that "you can do this at home kids" but are not sure how we are going to get a hold of the volcanic rock. It's tasty stuff and is alot like a Sunday roast, complete with spuds, carrots, stuffing and lamb. One of our table is a 70 year old Welsh lady who has been living in New Zealand for most of her life but hasn't lost her accent. She tells us that she has done 4 sky dives in New Zealand and loved them, except for the last one - which she had to do as a tandem jump with a guide - because of her advanced years. "Very boring" she says in her best lilting Welsh.

Although the tour was commercial - we were part of a group of nearly 100 people - it's well worth doing, just to learn something about the vibrant Maori culture and take a haka dance class. Our bus driver asks the group to reciprocate on the way home and each nationality has to sing a song. After Leahanne pushes hard for "Dungarvan My Home Town", we agree on singing "The Fields of Athenry". It doesn't sound like much of a war song by comparison with the haka. Doug Howlett must be finding it hard to get psyched up for Munster games listening to this lament.

Our exit from the campsite the next day is less than textbook. To power the microwave (which we barely use) and recharge the camera and laptop we plug in the campervan every time we arrive at the campsite. Each powered site has an electricity socket at about head height. Part of the ritual every morning before we drive off is to unplug the van. This is alot more pleasant than the smelly job of discharging "grey water" in the campsite's dump station. Anyway, for some reason, we forget to unplug the van this morning. It's hard to describe the freakish series of events that follows. The plug stays in the socket as we drive off and the electricity cable duly tautens. It manages to catch the underside of a wooden picnic table beside us, which in turn flips against a campervan in the neighbouring site. At this stage we notice that something is amiss. The collision wakes the occupants, a very nice Dutch couple who were very understanding about the whole incident (although we can't speak Dutch, from the body language and bemused looks, they can't understand how we managed to do this). No major damage was done to their van, apart from a bit of smudging from the wooden table but we exchange details in case there are any problems. Bloody Nora!

If you want to see photos click here.