Rotorua

In addition to the much anticipated zorbing in this town, we also did a few other touristy things. Margaret and William were not keen to do zorbing, but were very interested in more luge runs. You might remember that a luge is a small one-person cart that “glides” down a sloped concrete track with many curves. Margaret and her friend Caroline (and their moms) enjoyed doing this in Queenstown. Margaret got a second chance to hone her skills with her brothers when we later visited Queenstown as a family. After many painful minutes of trying to decipher the pricing structure to get the best deal, we took the Rotorua Gondola up the mountain and the kids sprinted for the luge. They all had great fun (Ben bought his own luge runs since he was also slated to zorb, but didn’t want to miss out on the luge).

We also visited a wool mill with a 103-year-old carding machine. This machine can card or comb a fleece of wool in about 15 minutes. More modern machines can do 6 fleeces in the same amount of time, but lack the character of this old girl. That night we attended a Maori cultural performance and sampled hangi for dinner. Hangi is the traditional meal which is cooked by steam in a covered pit. We had lamb, chicken, kumara, potatoes, and stuffing cooked this way, in addition to several salads. The performance included several displays of traditional dances, including this tribe’s haka (considered better than the one the All Blacks perform, if they do say so themselves). We finished our evening at the Mitai Maori family village with a bush walk in the rain to see several glow worm locations.

Our final hours in Rotorua were spent exploring the hot pools and bubbling mud that have made this town famous. Although there are several areas that boast the best views of the hydrothermal activity (for a price), we decided to take advantage of the public park and walkway, where we saw a good variety of activity. We even got to warm up our hands in one of the public hydrothermal pools.