Rotorua - Matamata

We met up again with our chum Jess in Roturua so we booked into stay for 2-3 nights so we could all chill out a bit. The stink bomb smell was everywhere but we got used to it and at least it covered up other boy smells in the van!
There is a big choice of things to do here but mostly they involve visiting geysers, doing the kiwi night walk and taking part in a cultural maori village social night - so we all booked all 3!

We started with the Rainbow Springs night walk around a man made centre place, but it was all done out in low lit fairy lights and small small streams everywhere with swans and loads of fish in them - quite a romantic setting really..
But they also had an indoor and an outdoor kiwi house and we were well excited as we hadnt seen any yet.

In the indoor one we seen one kiwi but it was sleeping and didnt move but they were bigger than we imagined and when we got to the outdoor enclosure there was one running around the place so we got to have a good look. they are very scared of humans and are really quite weird looking as their beaks are very long but they have no wings so they just look like they are going to fall straight on their faces!

The following day we decided to go to a place called Te Puia to watch the geysers - one in particular that shot up to 30 metres every hour, this was very cool and definitely worth the $35 in! It was huge and all around the enclosure were mud pools and fantastic rock formations and colours.

Around the geysers the ground is so hot its class and everyone is lying on it nice and toastie just waiting on the geyser to explode its hot water.. We got chatting to these chinese guys while waiting one of which said he would make me a princess if i went back to China with him!

After politely declining the offer we headed to the free maori concert in the same place. It was really great as they all dressed traditionally and brought us into the "charenui" - meeting place, and sang songs and then invited people up to join in for the finishing Haka...so yes Ger volunteered along with all the other boyfriends and husbands in the group..it was hilarious watching them trying to imitate the NZ all blacks but Ger seemed to fit in nicely!

We finished here and met up with Jess to head out for a full nights craic at a real maori village called Mitai, where they give you a traditional dinner caled the Hangi. Basically it was a sunday dinner cooked in an oven in the earth and it was absolutely gorgeous - lamb, chicken, roasties, corn, stuffing and even gravy!

After dinner the show started and they wanted a voulteer from our crowd of about 100 people to be the maori 'chief' for the night on stage, and yes once again Ger was volunteered - heehee...
It was hilarious as he was part of the act and they where showing him where and what to do and say - needless to say this was a once in a lifetime moment when i had to bow to him and refer to him as chief!! but it was well funny, raging though he didnt have his dubs jersey on at the time though!

In the morning we said goodbye to Jess and headed for Matamata - the LOR official location for the filming of Hobbiton ( ger was well excited)..
We got there in good time and booked on the tour for $50 each and they take you out on the bus to the farmers land that was used. It was a pretty cool layout but because all the farmers sheep still graze the hills, all the fronts and gates etc from the wee hobbitholes had to be removed as they were eating the props left behind! So unfortunately now its just whiteboards but it was still cool to walk around and in them and even more so for Ger!

We were going to stay in Matamata for the night but decided to head on to the Waitomo caves for our caving trip. We should have been there in about 2 hours but we thought we would take a shortcut - this didnt work and we ended up getting into waitomo camp 4 hours later!
Ah well we had a beer to laugh about it after!