Mercury Bay and Rotorua...

Up bright and early I made my way to the bus stop and found some other travellers, I was excited and got chatting to a few people then our big green Kiwi bus pulled up. Our driver was hilarious but the kind of hilarious that soon becomes annoying especially when she just doesn't shut up. We had a long drive out to Mercury Bay, we were meant to be making a few stops on the way but as it rained and rained and rained we just drove straight through to our first hostel. A cute little place called Turtle Cove. There wasn't really much to do here so we spent the night drinking and getting to know each other. Another early start the next morning as we set off for Roturua. The weather was a bit better so we managed to make a few touristy stops along the way. The best stop was at Hobbiton, a great stop for any Lord of the Rings geeks. So we all got our pictures taken with Gollum had a quick subway then it was back on our bus with a new driver, a driver who barely spoke, was really unorganised and kept telling us about cool things to see out of the window only once we had just past them...useful. We got to Rotorua quite early in the afternoon, a great place for any Geography geeks this time as the place is full of geysers, mud pools and various other geothermal activities and has a constant smell of rotten eggs due to the amount of sulphur in the air. A group of us decided to head out and try a bit of luging. Luging is basically sitting on a kind of skateboard looking thing made out of plastic that breaks if you pull the handles back. You throw yourself down a big concrete hill and go so fast that at points you even get air. We all absolutely loved this, had a few goes and even thought a drag race would be a good idea, it was but those who came out with grazed arms and legs after falling off probably didn't think so. That evening most of us chose to go to a cultural evening at Tamaki Maori Village. We were picked up by a funny old man in a bus which was meant to be our boat for our tribe. Adam, a pretty cool guy from Scotland who I had been talking to was chosen as our chief, it was his job to represent our tribe as we attempted to be welcomed into the village. Once in we were told that a Maori tribe would come and attempt to scare us away, one chief would be chosen to make a peace offering and only then would we be let in. We were told this was very serious and we weren't to laugh or even smile. The Maori people arrived, their traditional way of scaring off other tribes was very intimidating and quite scary but the peace offering was made and we all made our way through to the village where everything was a lot more chilled out. We learnt a lot about Maori culture, about their games, tattoos, wood carvings etc. before watching them perform some traditional dances and songs, this was amazing to see. They also performed the Haka, which most people know from New Zealands All Blacks at rugby matches. I had only ever seen it on T.V. before and was blown away, it was brilliant and terrifying at the same time. After this it was time for a feast which had been cooked in a makeshift oven, a hole dug into the ground filled with hot rocks giving all the food a real earthy taste. Once we were all nice and full we were again treated to some songs and a final Haka before we got back on the bus to the hostel.