this morning we went to kuirau park to show nopalita what it was she had seen the night before when we drove past it. it looked really cool at night. i still think this park is great for giving a glimpse of geothermal activity for free. there are even some small wading pools of hot spring water.

steam: good for the face, bad for the hair

then we went to ohinemutu village to show nopalita maori carvings at the marae. this time i took a picture inside st. faith's church, even though you're not supposed to, because i will never come here again and it's a really good example of a maori-decorated christian church. we also went to the store that they have there that we didn't know about before. they sell carvings that they make there in the shop, maori-made bone carving necklaces, and a few other items typical of tourist shops.

inside st. faith's

outside of the shop there were several pukeko walking about. they are really fun to watch! imagine a chicken, skinnier, black with blue underneath, a white butt, orange legs, with feathers gone around the legs so that they are visible, walking around really fast, a little awkward but mostly a strange, graceful elegance. that my friend is a pukeko.

pukeko

after that we drove by the lakefront and visited te puia, formerly known as te whakarewarewa. we were able to get a kiwi experience discount for all of us, cool! they are expanding the place or finally building it up into what will be a great park experience. now they have these little tram rides so we didn't spend all day walking around. the guide we had this time was a very friendly old lady and she was so much better than the young girl guide we had last time. she pointed out something we didn't know about last time. there is this giant concrete step looking thing that is actually a hot seat. it is heated by the geothermal activity and boy it really is hot. once nopalita sat down, it felt so good that it was really hard to get her off of it! she laid down and didn't want to move at all. if she could fold it up and sneak it back home in her luggage, she would.

enjoying the hot seat

i took a picture of the maori carving school because i did not last time. i took pictures of the waka (canoe) on display because i don't think i have taken pictures of any wakas on my trip! nopalita has yet to see a kiwi bird so we chose to go to te puia for the great geothermal activity and because we know we will be able to see kiwi there. sure enough, the kiwi were quite visible. one of them was walking around and the other one was taking a nap but just waking up as we were leaving.

carving school at te puia

then we chose not to ride the luge today in order to do a lot more gift shopping. we want to be done with this! almost there but the hardest people to buy for is what is holding us up. we went back to the hostel to quickly put our gifts away and get ready for dinner. we get to the room and there is no electricity! freak out! talk to front desk and they have no idea why the power is out. it is also out on a few chalets next to us. we are going out to dinner and the bus will pick us up in 15 minutes. by the time we get back the office will be closed. decision time. do we chance it or do we accept their option of moving all our things right now to the chalet next door whose power is still on? we chose to move all our things. it was crazy. flashlights in mouth as we grab all our things and just throw them in the chalet.

we signed up for the dinner/show at tamaki maori village. we are paying full price because we cannot get in contact with the kiwi experience bus driver that is in town. we'd probably be able to get a discount as we still have our bus tickets but this driver is not answering the messages we have left for him and tamaki does not allow direct booking discounts. we must book through kiwi in order to get the discount and the kiwi office said we must contact the driver. argh. whatever. at te puia, we thought we saw the kiwi driver but he gave twiddle thumbs the brush off. he seems familiar but i cannot place it because he was never our driver on any of the bus rides.

tamaki maori village

i had heard that these dinner shows were not so good because they are for tourists and hence not authentic. hey, how many foreigners are going to get something truly authentic? how many visitors to new zealand are going to befriend a maori in touch with the culture and where they asked to visit, given a ceremony and performance? to quote scribe, "not many, if any." so this is what we will have to do to see a bit of maori culture apart from the westernization of it in museum paintings and such. we are going for the performance aspect whereas others are probably going to pig out at the buffet. being that all of us our vegetarian+, we really won't be able to eat much of anything so food is not a factor for us.

the bus picked us and i was pretty impressed. i didn't think it would be like this at all. you are dropped off in the woods and there are little representations of village life. sure not everyone who works there is into it (you can tell it's just a job so they can buy more cds) and some were even being silly and playing jyankenpo (that's paper scissors rocks to you non-japanese) but at least they looked like they were having a good time.

after wandering about outside for 20 minutes or so, you go indoors for the performances. the usual song and dance, poi and haka. they introduced various instruments and their history which i thought was very cool since i am into music. there is this butterfly bull thing that you wave around that i heard at te papa. there's just something about the sound that i like. more on that in a moment.

the haka

after about an hour, we finally got to eat. i was starving by this point so i couldn't really eat anything, because my stomach had cramped up and started to eat itself, though i had sworn i would eat my entrance fee's worth of potatoes and kumara if they were without butter. a note on the food. we picked one of the vegetarian options. you could have a bed of rice toppped with samosas, spring rolls, both, or all that with fish. fish is vegetarian?! whatever. so we went with both samosas and spring rolls. good thing too. when the plates came out i knew exactly what it was. i see these huge boxes of frozen samosas and spring rolls for less than $5. i have read the ingredients. samosas are not vegan but to the best of my knowledge the spring rolls are. they are mini. i bought them before. they are tasteless. you can hardly tell if there is filling in either. it's just eating fried bits. i hit the buffet line and tried some carrots (ack! butter!), kumara (alright) and potato (tastes earthy). there was also some salad on our plates and rolls on the table. water was provided and you could serve yourself coffee or tea but you had to pay for even drinks like juice or soda. i didn't get that one. in america you'd get at least 1 drink free if it was non-alcoholic. but we are in new zealand. there was some house special tropical juice drink that was in both alcoholic and non-alcoholic forms. twiddle thumbs really wanted to try it so she bought us all 1 of them to try out. she paid for it before asking what was in it, which is very unlike her. she grills people on items to find out the vegan-ness of it whereas i tend to forget and just assume food is safe. i knew tonight would be vegetarian anyway. but these drinks. man, it is not tropical juice. it is cream based. why must everything new zealanders do involve cream?!?!?! i thought i would be very sick but i was lucky. i guess i have built up a slight tolerance towards dairy while in new zealand since it's in everything. i didn't drink the whole thing but i drank a lot of it. it was very weird and just indescribable.

when we were eating, we realized that over at the next table was the guy from te puia that we thought was the kiwi bus driver. that asshole is the kiwi driver after all! and that asshole is a liar! he is a pig. he is a fat man that you could tell was only there to pig out. we hate him but what can we do? nothing. let go of it. our trip is almost over. however, we have 2 addendum items to the survey we filled out for kiwi experience. #1 why don't you take people to huka falls? it was awesome! #2 this driver is an asshole.

after dinner, we went outside to wander around the gift shops they have there. my visit ended when i entered the second shop. i talked to the shop keeper for the rest of my time there. the girls thought i fell down the toilet or something. i saw what i thought was that butterfly bull whoosh whoosh thing. i wanted to buy it 'cos it was only $30. the sign said purerehua. i memorized that name and tried to say it right when i asked to buy it. when the man was showing it to me, i realized it was the spinning toy that they showed and said it was also used for healing. the guy was really nice and explaining it and i realized that just his explanation was worth some money and i didn't want to seem ungrateful or an idiot and such so i was gonna buy it after all. but instead of paying for it right away, he just kept talking and talking and talking and i learned so much about maori culture. it was really amazing. this guy is a carver from way east where they still only speak maori. he came to rotorua to learn english and his english is perfect. he speaks so fast and i was trying to absorb everything. he went over the paintings and carvings and explained them and how the missionary ones are wrong. one of the paintings was of his grandfather or great-grandfather. anyway, he was a healer but the painting depicts him with a weapon and his facial moko (tattoo) is symmetrical which is incorrect. moko is split so that one side is the father's genealogy and the other side is the mother's but i can't remember which is which anymore. i asked if he could recommend any books so that way i could learn more about this stuff back home and he said books don't really cover this stuff. he wrote down a few authors on a piece of paper that i tucked into my purse. unfortunately museums don't know this stuff and a lot of maori don't and it's not their fault, etc. people are getting incorrect mokos and are spiritually sick because of it, etc. etc. just a great conversation. eventually i asked him what the name of the instrument is that i had originally wanted to purchase and he said it is also called a purerehua. i thought so... i'll just have to order one or make my own i guess.

we talked for a very long time, probably 30 minutes, but he did most of the talking. if i was going to be in town tomorrow, i think he was going to show me around a marae and explain the carvings. within like the first 5 minutes of the conversation, i wanted to call twiddle thumbs and nopalita to come over to listen too but i thought it would be rude to whip out my phone in the middle of his talk. in the end, it was a phone call that ended our conversation. it was time to leave so the girls called me. i had missed the ending performance but that's alright. at the end, i finally paid for the purerehua and he would only accept $20 for it. awesome man.