We left the beaches of eastern New Zealand and began to traverse towards the famous surf break on the West Coast, Raglan. Along the way, we decided to put back on our tourist shoes and hit a couple destinations en route. We had long debated a stop in Rotorua, a top tourist destination for its geo-thermal activity. Given the rainy weather, we figured it would be a great day to see boiling mud pits, geysers, and traditional Maori culture. As we arrived at Rotorua, we found the main town and its attractions all clustered along a beautiful lake, and overrun with large tour buses.
We learned a good travel lesson here. It's never a good idea to head to a place, half-committed. I stopped at the information kiosk and was offered the low deal of roughly $150 US to enter a Maori Village, see a geyser, and a dance performance if we stuck around for three hours. I plopped down about the same amount of money to jump off a bridge without hesitation, but couldn't quite bring myself to do the same here. We weren't all in. We debated it for awhile, as it felt obligatory to see some Maori culture, but then the kids reminded us of our first day in Auckland, when we flipped the channels on the TV and sat mesmerized in front a station featuring a Maori performance. We had sat there, commenting on the outfits, the facial tattoos and the music for a half an hour, easy. Once we realized we had covered our "cultural segment" of the trip, Rob and I nixed the village trip without any guilt.
That said, we still felt obligated to see something, since we had made the detour to the area. We settled on Indian food (does that count as cultural?), a walk in the park - plenty of sulphur smells and boiling mud for free, bonus! - and found thermal heated pools and hot tubs to dunk in for a couple hours.
Mission Success, though not a picture taken. We checked Rotorua off the list.
On to the Waitomo Caves to see glow-in-the-dark worms.
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