Thermal wonderland

Yesterday evening I had my first kiwi barbeque experience. Matt invited me to his cousin's place for some BBQ food and to watch the rugby game between NZ's national team the All Blacks and the Wallabies (Australia). It was a pretty decent night, we even saw a live firework show which rivaled the best Vasa has to offer on New Year's Eve (Matt's cousin lives next to a racecourse where there was a big car competition). Since I've decided to have a vegetarian month (at the very least) and still have 1½ weeks to go, there was no BBQ meat on my plate. I really didn't mind as the steaks, chicken wings and kebabs looked quite black and burned to my eyes. I was happy with the feta-filled button mushrooms and kumara (sweet potatoe) slices I had brought and BBQed myself.

I offered some salmiakki-sweets from Finland to everyone to taste, but noone liked them. We have yet to meet the first person on this trip to like salmiakki either as a sweet or in liquid form (salmiakkikossu)! Guess it really is an acquired taste :)

But, I really wasn't going to go into more details of yesterday. Instead I'm briefly (at least I'll try to be brief) going to tell you a couple of things we did about 4 weeks ago after leaving the Coromandel Peninsula.

Heading south from the peninsula we stopped for one night in Tauranga (where I currently reside, you know) before continuing to Rotorua. A major reason for us coming to Rotorua at the time was the national championships in basketball for under 16-year-old teens. Giigan wanted to check the games out.

Backgammon and lots of toffee ice-cream in Tauranga

Rotorua lies in the middle of the North Island's volcanic plateau and there is still a lot of thermal activity in the area. The city lies by Lake Rotorua, which is a gigantic volcanic crater. Pools with either hot boiling water or bubbling mud are spread throughout the town and the surrounding countryside. There are hot springs, geysers and gas vents. Our travel books had warned us of the strong smell of sulphur (rotten eggs) prevailing in the area, but we think the remarks were exaggerated. Sure, from time to time the offensive smell reached our noses, but hardly constantly.

We ended up staying in Rotorua for more than a week. The absolute highlight was one of the first days when we went to the sports centre to watch a couple of basketball games, but soon found ourselves somewhere completely different.

After just 5 minutes of aimlessly wandering around the sports centre a grey-haired man in his 60s approached Giigan. His name was Brian and he turned out to be a nice fellow offering to show us around the hot pools by the lake just outside the sports centre. Before we even could say "cheesecake" we found ourselves outdoors, walking inside the fenced areas among the bubbling pools along with our "guide". Brian told us about the different kinds of pools and gas vents and showed the way where it was safe to walk. From there he offered to take us out in his car to look at some of the larger non-commercial hot pools and attractions that the locals visit and bath in. It was an unbelievable opportunity for us (all commercial thermal parks around Rotorua are rather expensive) so of course we accepted!

Our local guide and acquaintance Brian and Giigan by a boiling mud pool

We drove around 30 km north from Rotorua and visited a small hot lake by the Rainbow Mountain (so named because of the different colours of the stone on one of its cliff walls), a huge boiling mud pool and Cerosine Creek where some people were bathing and enjoying the warm flowing water. At the small car park next to Cerosine Creek thieves had broken into one of the cars just minutes before we arrived. A couple of guys stood there in their towels calling the police. Incidents like that are unfortunately rather common in NZ at places tourists visit, so you shouldn't leave any valuables in the car even if you'll be gone for just a few minutes! We were a bit stunned by this because Cerosine Creek was pretty remote and not a very well known tourist attraction (a couple of kms from the highway along a small unceiled road), but apparently the thieves are quite professional and know their business.

During the drive we learned that it was a hobby of Brian's to in his free time meet up with people from other places and show them around Rotorua - at no cost. He reminded us in some ways of Piri who we met on Rarotonga. Both were generous men who liked the company of new people like us.

Finally Brian took us to a secluded hot water stream with a small waterfall. There were no other people there and Brian told us that it's only locals who know about the spot. It was fantastic and perfect for a bath! Luckily Brian had brought several towels with him. We relaxed there in the warm pool beneath the waterfall for almost an hour, talking with Brian about NZ and Finland. He was very interested in learning about other countries and new customs and we had good discussions with him.

The beautiful hot stream with the waterfall

By the time we were back in Rotorua we had been gone for several hours. It is such a joy to meet people like Brian. People who may have had hard times in life (his wife had passed away in cancer a few years ago) but struggle on and remain positive and friendly beyond imagination towards life and other people. The world needs more of them.

Besides checking out the thermal activity around Rotorua you might want to see a Maori cultural show while in the town. We went on the Tamaki Maori Cultural Experience, which was a whole evening thing. We (and around 150 other tourists) were taken out to a reconstructed Maori pa village. There we saw a good Maori cultural show and had a traditional hangi dinner. Hangi is a Maori feast where the food has been prepared in the traditional earth-oven (called umu) way of the Maori people. Basically it's very similar to rövargrop/rosvokuoppa back home in Scandinavia. We are, however, not quite sure if everything that was claimed to have been prepared in the earth-oven actually had been. The amount of food necessary for all of us would have been very tedious to cook for 5 hours in an earth-oven and besides, few of the buffet dishes had any special "earth-oven" taste to them.

A frightened JBB next to a fearsome Maori warrior

While the main courses were just barely OK, the desserts were excellent. Steam pudding with lovely custard and traditional pavlova. Pavlova is an interesting cake popular in NZ and Australia. It's made up of a thick meringue base, topped with lashings of cream and kiwi fruit slices. An absolute bliss!

Dammit, shouldn't have mentioned pavlova! Now I feel like having something sweet...

We felt that although the Maori cultural show was good and the food acceptable, the whole package was not worth the hefty price of $80 per person. Luckily we didn't pay a cent for the evening! Apparently there must have been some kind of confusion about our payment, since at no point were we asked to slam a credit card or cash in front of anyone. And this time we, eeh, didn't feel the need to be completely honest travelers, but decided to go with the flow instead :)

MORE PICTURES from Tauranga and Rotorua are available here!