Today was another... odd day, great but I did odd things. I liked it.
In the morning, we went took a bus ride from Waitomo to Rotorua. We made a stop at the Agrodome. Do you know what they do there? Probably not, unless you happened to memorize my itinerary.
The Argodome puts on an interactive farming and herding show. The audience was taught about the many...many types of sheep that are in the world, and the difference in the wool. We were taught how to milk a cow, feed baby sheep, and we watched a sheep get sheared! Then we got t o experience how fantastic sheepdogs are. We met 2 types, one that herds just by a look, and doesn't bark, and one breed that barks. The sheep were kewl, the dogs were kewl, and the presentation was great. I throughly enjoyed the humor and the enthusiasm of the presenter.
Next up on the agenda was Zorbing! There really is no way for me to describe zorbing to you, other to put it like this.... Imagine a human size hamster ball, inside a double the size meant for a human hamster ball. The smaller ball is filled with water, and then the crazy person (that would be me) going for the ride jumps in, and rolls down a hill at quite a rapid pace. It was great. I suggest, looking Zorbing up on YouTube.com to get a better idea. My videos and pictures won't be posted for at least a few weeks from now.
After I was a human hamster, I went to Rainbow Ranch, which is a wildlife reserve. I saw rainbow trout, ducks, swans, wallabies, and best of all a Kiwi Bird! I had a great time with the small group of us (5) that went, I got a lot off pictures and was able tok play with my fancy camera for the first time in days, as it's been raining since I got to New Zealand.
The afternoon was looking up, until my activity I had chosen to to, got canceled because off wind. Instead, I ended up going to the local thermal spring Maori Village, which had the weirdest longest name I've ever seen, Tewhakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao, or Whakarewarewa for short. (I made sure that I spelt that right... totally not making it up.
So the village, was interesting., There are thermal mineral springs and pools through out the whole village, and the tribe uses the thermal activity to cook food, bathe, live long lives, etc. Very intresting stuff. The village smelt like sulfur, this is because of the thermal activity. Apparently the molten is pretty close to the surface, infect the grown even in the shade was hot to the touch. We also were around during the time that the geysers went off, so that was pretty to view.
Dinner was lovely. We had what was told to us to be an authentic Maori dinner, complete with a Maori hangi dance show. Some of the people on tour were brought up to teh stage and were taught some dancing. The dancing was very enthusastic, and at times kind of scary. A lot of it was about war and fighting and getting hyped up to fight. Some of the men had tradition tattoos including ones on their face. It was a fun afternoon and night of traditional culture.
After dinner, some people ended up in my room for a little tea party before bed, it was fun talking with them about different foods, candy, and other culture differences.
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Uploaded and sent from an iPad that's exploring New Zealand. Please try not to mind the typos and spelling errors. Autocorrect does some funny things.
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