Maori, Hangis, & Hakas - Rotorua

My grandparents are here in New Zealand for a visit.
We've planned lots of things for them and left some things unplanned.
One of those "planned" things was a trip to Rotorua.

I say "planned" loosely because we planned to go to Rotorua, and we planned to have a hangi and see a performance, but we didn't actually call to make reservations until the day of the trip. Um...we're not good at this trip planning thing. Anyway, there were spots available and we found ourselves on the road to Rotorua.

The drive was beautiful. It was relaxing. It was fun. It was georgeous. It was.....wheewew wheewew....a cop! I was stopped by a cop. As I was driving to Rotorua with my family I was stopped by a cop for the first time ever. Oh man was I scared. I honestly didn't know what I had done. I wasn't speeding. No broken windows or obvious car problems. I pulled to the side of the road and waited in nervous anticipation as the officer walked to my window.
Officer: "Good Morning."
Me in my head, "Tell me what you want and I'll let you know if it's a good morning."
Officer: "I'm doing a license check. Can I see your license?"
Me in my head: "I'm not getting a ticket?! Yeeeeeesssssssssssssss!"
I showed him my license then he asked how long I was gonna be in NZ. After that he let me go.
Whew! My first up close experience with a New Zealand cop. ...I still think their cars are cute.

In Rotorua we visited the Moari village of Whakarewarewa (try saying that three times fast....actually, try saying that even once). It's a thermal village located on an active volcano. Lots of steam comes out of the ground which they use to cook a hangi meal of meat, potatoes, stuffing, and bread pudding. Hangis are wrapped in foil and cooked in the ground where there are steam vents. It's pretty cool to see. There is also boiling mud around certain areas of the city and boiling water pools (the water can get up to 395 degrees F). The Maori people of the village cook corn and other vegetables in this boiling water. We actually got to watch the corn being cooked under the water for ten minutes. How cool to have a volcano do the cooking for you. And somewhat dangerous.

In this village we also went on a tour to see and hear about the Maori way of life. We saw some geysers in the distance. We also watched a cultural performance. The performance was cool. At one point the men performed a traditional war dance called a Haka. It was full of energy and expression. A funny thing that happened during the performance was that there was a man taking pictures with a fancy camera who decided to stand in the middle of the audience to take his pictures instead of in the back. In fact, he decided to stand right in front of me and Cara. We couldn't believe he could be so rude as to stand in front of people just so he could get a picture on a camera that seemed to have and intense zooming capability, and would probably capture better pictures than mine even if he stood in the back. Cara was debating telling him to sit down when a relative came over and pulled him away and made him sit on the end. Ha. Now that was funny. Also, at some point during the performance, one of the speakers on the stage had to stop and tell some of the tourists in the back to be quiet because they were standing around talking (and yelling) instead of watching the show. Some people can be really rude!

We ended the day going to Lake Rotorua and watching some black ducks, black swans, and white geese float on the lake. We had dinner at a buffet place (where I tried oysters for the first time, eew), and drove home tired and content. It was a thoroughly satisfactory time in Rotorua.