The Maori show/dinner was fun.  The bus driver that picked us up was funny.  He taught us “Kiora” which means “Hello, Goodbye, How are you, etc”.  Then he proceeded to translate it to almost every language in the world, including accents in that language.  At the dinner/show they did a ceremony before letting us in.  Then there were different educational stations where they showed us different parts of their culture. They were warriors and great sea navigators.  Many of their games were based on hand eye coordination and agility to make them better warriors.  After that they took us to a room where they did traditional song and dance.  I found it interesting that they shake their hands a lot in the dancing and they explained that this was the life force.  Louise, are you reading this?  They believe shaking of their hands is life force.  Then dinner.  The dinner was similar to a Hawaiian Luau where the food was cooked in the earth.  After there was more singing and dancing and more funny bus driver who knew the national anthem of many countries.

 

On Day 3 of the tour we started off by going to see some mud pools.  There is a lot of geothermal activity in the area.  It was exciting for a minute.  Then we went to a place where two creeks met, one was cold and one was warm.  A few of us sat in the creek for a little bit.  There was supposed to be skydiving today, but it got canceled.  I wasn’t going to skydive anyway so it didn’t matter to me, but I think the mud pools and two creeks was an attempt to fill the extra time.  Then we went to Huka falls.  It’s a very impressive waterfall.  It’s not tall, but it’s a tight rock canyon and the volume of water being pushed through it is insane.  A sign said the volume of water could fill 5 olympic sized pools every minute.  After that we went to Blue Duck Station which was a ranch in the middle of nowhere.  We were supposed to do some 4wd touring of the ranch, but because it was raining, we didn’t go very far.  They spent a long time telling us about the ranch instead.  It was very beautiful, but it would have been more interesting if we could have seen more of the ranch.

On Day 4 of the tour we were supposed to hike the Tongarino Crossing.  It is supposed to be a live volcano, but I don’t think you can see lava or anything.  It got canceled because of weather.  Everyone on the bus was so cranky about it.  So we did a smaller hike to a waterfall.  Half the group did that and then went back into town for lunch.  The rest of us did a hike from there that went to two lakes.  The hike was longer than I expected and it was all above tree line with a lot of exposure – it was so windy.  I decided I wanted to spread some of Scott’s ashes above the lakes.  I got one guy to take the picture and I tested the direction of the wind.  Right after we had a discussion about how many times I’ve been covered in Scott’s ashes.  Just as I let the ashes go the wind changed direction and blew Scott all over another girl on the tour.  She was a bit freaked out about it.  The guy and I kind of joked about it and that freaked her out more.  I felt a mixture of embarrassment and humor.  I wanted to laugh, but didn’t think that would help much.

(c) All rights reserved Kimberly Fiore