another update from NZ. We had ourselves a weekend full of action, so there is a lot of pictures and info to talk about. This past weekend was the Labour Day long weekend which gave us that extra day off work to get into trouble.
Friday night we headed to the local pub in Owhango (where we are living) for the Dragon concert held outside. Dragon is a 70s rock band that was huge in Australia and New Zealand and this was their 40th anniversary tour. Hello Sailor, another Kiwi band, were touring with them. They sang the only song that we had heard before "Gutter Black" which is the theme song for Outrageous Fortune, a New Zealand TV show that Roberta and her sister Jocy were obsessed with. It was cool to take in the kiwi music culture. We could tell which were the most popular songs as the rest of the crowd knew all the words.
Once we had shaken all the cobwebs from our brains, we left for Rotorua on Saturday morning. Rotorua is a tourist hotspot being in the middle of the geothermal zone and having a huge selection of extreme sports to choose from. The drive from Owhango to Rotorua took us around 2.5 hours as we made a couple of stops to check out a couple of lookouts and have ourselves some lunch.
Our first item on the agenda was whitewater rafting on the Kaituna river. It is a class 5 out of 6 river meaning the rapids are quite large and included going over a 7 meter waterfall.....more on that later. In our raft there was Roberta and I, the local guide, and two guys from Saudi Arabia that could not speak English very well. They just nodded and smiled as the guide went over safety but really didn't know what he was talking about. We tried to help out but I don't think it worked. Roberta got a few laughs from the look of fear that they had as we went over some of the larger rapids. The ride itself took around 1 hour and was awesome. The looks on our faces tell the story.
Safety briefing - taking everything serious.
Making our way to the water.
The first big rapid.
Hmm...where did we go.
Someone seems to be paddling harder??
Next is the sequence of pictures going over the 7 meter waterfall.
and then we flipped...
Roberta and I in the water.
We were the only one of the three rafts that flipped, but it was awesome. We think our guide meant to flip us.
All back in the boat safe and sound.
The Group
After that great ride, we rushed back into Rotorua to catch the bus out to Tamaki Maori Village which was waiting for us. Our bus driver informed us about some of the history of the Maori people and appointed us a chief. We arrived at the outskirts of the fortified village, but nobody may enter the tribal grounds until the Powhiri, a formal welcome ceremony, was performed. Haka challenges were performed by a series of warriors from the village.
Here is a video to show a taste of it.
Eventually, a peace offering (teka) was laid at the feet of our Chief which he accepted and we were allowed into the village. We walked around the village to different little houses where they showed certain aspects of their culture like games they played, the haka, how they make tools and how they made their carvings, and how they cooked.
After walking around the village, we headed into the sacred meeting house for some song and dance. By the end of this our stomachs were growling for food. We ended the night with a large feast.
After that action-packed day, we were ready for bed when we got back to our camper van at around 10.
More to come.......
Our supper brought out from the ground called a hangi.
More to come.......
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