Day Seven- Monday

Enjoying swimming in Hot water

Maori cultural performance

Mike braves driving on the other side of the road

Lisa and Ian had headed home on Sunday so Monday was our first day of driving in New Zealand which means driving on the other side of the street. Mike handled it like a pro. It took him a while to get used to the turn singnal and the wipers controls being opposite as well, so we had a really clean window.

We started our day at Te Pue which is another geothermal park that also has a lot of information about the Maori people who are the native people to New Zealand. We got to walk through a mock village and see how they once lived. We also want to a cultural performance where we learned about the welcome ceremony as well as saw them do some singing and dancing. Lillianna LOVED it. I was worried how it would go because part of the performance was a bit scarey but even when they finished with that she wanted more. She was so not happy when it was done and didn't understand why we couldn't just hit the play button like we can with the DVD player. The other cool thing this park has is a geyser that shoots up 20 meters in the air. It was pretty cool to see. There is a smaller one that goes off first and we nearly missed the big one because we thought we had seen it when the little one went off and weren't all that impressed. We hiked another trail and came back so what all the fuss is about.

The afternoon we spent exploring a bit of the countryside outside of Rotorua and made sure we got our moneysworth out of the rental car. First we went and saw the blue lake which wasn't much bluer than the lakes back home and then we went to one of the trip highlights so far- Kerosene creek. It is a hot water creek that has an awesome swimming whole. It is about 20 miles out of town and thank you guide book for the directions, we had a blast! About a 5 minute walk down a path there is the swimming hole with a nice sandy bottom. It was the PERFECT temperature! It was just like getting into the hot tub, except instead of smelling like chlorine it smelled like rotten eggs. It was pretty shallow- at the one end about knee deep- perfect for sitting and the other about waist deep. One end had a waterfall that gives an amazing massage. It was so great to stand under it and have water beat down on your neck and bath. Both Mike and I took turns doing that. Lillianna put her trusty bucket to good use once more. I wish I had a creek like this in my backyard (minus the egg smells- our suits still stink after being washed).