Rotorua thats the way and away goes troubles down the drain! Rotorua!

Haha, all weekend (May 22-25) I kept singing or thinking that to the commercials. damn tunes!

Rotorua is the cultural capital of New Zealand and therefore THE place to experience the Maori culture. Maori were the people that were here before the white people came! (like rest of the pacific islanders, to put it bluntly!) My goal was to see and learn as much as I could while I was there.

Muir family friends own a motel there so we stayed with them in their house (the back of the office, its really cool!).

Thursday night I went to a cultural show. It was a hungi (feast) with a show of typical cultural song and dance. After that I had paid for the night Kiwi encounter so I went to Rainbow Springs animal park and toured that. I got to see Kiwis. (i won't bother loading a pic because you can't see them, since we couldn't use a flash.) Yay for actually getting to see one, even if it was in captivity though, they have a cool hatch, raise then release program there though.




Friday morning I walked the kids to the park. They enjoyed playing on the new playground and the ducks, geese, i dunno what they are?





Friday afternoon Sheryll (the family friend) took us up the gondola and Bella and I did the luge! I was so proud of her, this is a girl who won't ride Oscars bike down the grass, yet Oscar does it! We went to see the sheep, but they were closed, then we went to the Maori living village (Whakarewarewa).










Sat morning I tried to buy some wool to make a scarf but couldn't find any i liked. And tried to find some pjs, and slippers and again with no luck, or I'm just stingy unless its drinks! I went to the Rotorua musuem (loads about the hot springs and geothermal and healing abilities of the spa, etc).







Then we went to the animal park place. This was AMAZING. We got to see the lions being fed. Now those that have been to the SF zoo, this is nothing like that. You are right next to the cage. There are 10 lions in there, they were walking back and forth right in front of where I was sitting in front of them. I could've stuck my fingers through the chain link fence and pet them. I tried, didn't succeed and then thought better of it, they knew it was dinner time. The first food that went in caused a huge ROAR and Oscar screamed and cried! It was funny, he didn't know what to think after that. The funny part about that is.. (until this point he knew only a few animal sounds, the LIONS roar being his favorite, with elephant, monkey, crocodiles snap, and snake.) For about an hour after the feeding he wouldn't do the roar but he'd do the other sounds... its was cute!!














Then we went and saw 'boiling mud' Did I mention that Rotorua is a thermal hotspot. Its also called "Rotten Rura" and smells like rotten eggs. There are spas and during the War there was a place built to cure American soldiers. (It never actually got American soldiers because the war advanced too far to the North, but was used for NZ soldiers.) But after that Rotorua became world famous for its healing abilities. Belinda, Bella and I went to the Polynesian Spa for the Hot Mineral 'spa therapies' haha, really it was just a big pool and jacuzzi. But you can't go there and not go to the spa! I forgot to take off my toe ring though and the mineral water turned it black!


That night I went and met up with a couple Couchsurfers. We played a trivia game and chatted. I stayed up reading that night... good book, can't think of the name of it!

We got up early the next day and were on our way Sunday. But of course, got Starbucks on our way out of town!! And came back to a sunny Sunday in Tairua to read... and went to the beach around 4 with the kids because Bella was driving me insane when I was trying to read! (there are SOOO many more GREAT pics I could've put up but didnt...and I can't find a couple of the really good ones that Binds took with her camera, bummer!)