No tour around New Zealand is complete without a stop in Rotorua, so while we were making our way across the North Island, we stopped there for a couple nights (and yes, I am STILL working on blog posts from a trip two months ago, but whatever). I have been there before, but somehow manage to always find something new to do.
This time it was the Whakarewarewa Village, complete with an exciting cultural experience. I had visited a place doing a cultural experience before, but this was much better on many levels. The song and dance cultural experience (during which I took no photos this time, sorry) was far more interactive and they explained all that was going on and being said. The experience also included a tour through the village, which is still inhabited by Maori today. Much of life there is as it was before modern technology. There is very little electricity, a shared public bath, and cooking is done via steam boxes shared by all in the village. The village has a long history, including a history of guides which have done tours through the village to visitors as famous as the Queen of England and as little known as your average tourist. The village is located on fault lines so as the land shifts so must the village. We could see evidence of houses which had to be abandoned due to extreme heat from steam coming up through the earth. There were also several wonderful examples of the bubbling mud and other thermal delights for which Rotorua is known.
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| Entrance to the village |
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| Bubbling mud!! |
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| Pohutu Geyser |
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| Steaming rocks |
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| Main street of the village |
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| The Catholic Church |
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| Inside the church |
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| The Marae--Meeting House |
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| Guardian |
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| Another guardian |
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