So I decided to do New Zealand by car. This was the result of a lot of planning and research and soul-searching and soothsaying and seances. I will save you all of those details though and leave you with the decision: by car it is.
This morning, I packed up my stuff and left my isolation. Goodbye hermit.
Skipping over more supernatural planning details, I uber’d to Omega Car Rentals and asked for a car. Because it was not their large airport location, I was lucky that one of the three cars there was available to rent.
Fast forward to sitting in the car with the drivers side on the right side of the car and pulling out into the street.
I’ve actually come across a number of helpful sources addressed to those courageous folks driving for the first time on the wrong side of the road - the TV screens on the airplane, NewZealand.com, a backpacker’s guide website, a local from whom I got some particularly helpful tips about roundabout etiquette. So, I was surprisingly prepared for what was ultimately a last-minute decision to drive.
What an interesting experience. I spent several hours driving today. In cities and towns, where you need to change lanes and make turns and stuff, it’s a little crazy. Once you’re going and on the highway for longer distances, it’s pretty much the same.
I do find that I have to fight an almost constant tendency to drift to the outside of the lane. By happy accident, the passenger’s side mirror of my car was set at an angle that showed more of the road itself than of other cars. So, I decided to leave it because it also gave me a clear view of the line over there. I’ve invented the story in my mind that locals can tell that a car is being driven by a foreigner because it will keep drifting out its lane (I’m pretty sure that I never actually made it OUT of my lane).
So. Destination. I booked a room in Rotorua, because I found that there are four things on my list that are relatively close to there. The plan is to fit those four things into the time that I have before I check out on Thursday morning. These to-dos don’t have an order or time slots or tickets yet.
I made it to my hotel, got into my room, opened (and closed) all of the cupboards and drawers and closets in the place, and swan dived/bellyflopped onto the bed. My normal routine. I really wanted to just lie there for a bit, but my brain came through for me and reminded me of the plan. Let’s check the schedule of events at Te Puia right now, it said! A real apostrophe. Looking at their offerings, I was most interested in their daytime-nighttime event combo. Turns out, it starts at 4:30pm. It was 4:10pm. I hurried out and just made it in time for that tour. It was perfection. Good job, brain.
(Rather than include at this point a formal description of what Te Puia is, I’ll just tell what I did there and you can know that that’s what it is.)
The first thing was a guided tour. We started off with a stop by The Kiwi House. It’s one of the places in New Zealand where you can see kiwis (the bird, not the fruit, idk where the fruit is to be found, I haven’t seen any, but if you’re here and looking for one I would suggest a grocery store). The endangered kiwi is a nocturnal bird, so at Te Puia, they have the kiwis on a reverse schedule so that visitors can see them. During the day, the keepers turn off the lights so that the birds think that it’s nighttime and then the peeps turn the lights on at nighttime and the birds go to sleep. So it’s very dark inside, lit by very dim, red light. After our eyes adjusted, we were able to pick them out. There are only two. They are so much bigger than I thought, about the size of a chicken. They are a bit cute in pictures when you think that they are songbird-sized. At chicken size, they’re just an odd bird.
Our next sites on the trip were some boiling mud and then a pair of geysers. Rotorua is a very geothermally active area. It’s not uncommon to be treated to sulphurous aromas and steam vents around town. In fact, I think that the water in my shower smells kind of sulfurful. The geysers at Te Puia get all geysery about once an hour, but not on a Faithful schedule. Unfortunately, they must have been anxious, because there was no performance, which was fine, because the evening agenda includes a trip to the geysers. So, cross your fingers for an eruption later.
One of the main reasons that I went to Te Puia today was for its Maori aspect. I looked into the various options for learning about and experiencing Maori culture while I’m here in New Zealand and chose Te Puia. Our tour guide, Carla, was quite the expert and was also really good about filling the time with jokes and with anecdotes about her own Maori family. One of the most fascinating facts that I learned was that NZ was unpopulated until 800-900AD!! Scientists have found no proof of human habitation any earlier than that.
That concluded our daytime tour.
The evening schedule was a traditional Maori ceremony and performance followed by an all-you-can eat dinner and a return to the geysers.
For the ceremony, we had to choose a chief to represent our group. Then, a warrior in authentic Maori garb came out of the lodge and presented a palm frond that our chief picked up to indicate that we were peaceful. The chief and the warrior then touched noses twice. Our guide explained that two touches is a greeting, but three times is marriage, so he should count carefully.
We went into the lodge for the traditional performance. I really enjoyed it a lot. I wished that our crowd was a bit more energetic. I tried to get more applause going at appropriate points, but I quit after I was the only one clapping. Thankfully, people were able to take cues from the stage when the performers would indicate that applause were now REALLY called for.
One thing that stood out to me was about the facial expressions that they would make. It’s a thing in Maori culture to look scary by widening the eyes and sticking one’s tongue out, which I think that, by modern sensibilities, can come off a bit silly. However, at one point, there was a woman staring down the crowd with wide eyes that I think finally got the point across. She WAS scary. I was impressed. It was during a point where all of the performers were on the stage, but she really stood out to me.
After the performance, we went to dinner which was SO GOOD! It’s perhaps not a fair comparison between this and the Aulani luau, but there were enough similarities that I can’t help but make one. THIS experience was what I really wanted out of the luau. You know that I LOVE Disney, but I appreciated the higher authenticity of the Te Puia performance and dinner. It still wasn’t all 100% historically accurate. For example, the food (the meat portion) was prepared the “traditional way”, baked in the ground for several hours, but using a steel lid to keep in the heat in lieu of dirt. But it all felt better and was the experience that I was hoping it would be.
Anyway, so yeah, the food was SO GOOD and, as it was all-you-can-eat, we were encouraged to go back as many times as possible. I tried a bit of most of it, but my favorites were a kumara and watercress soup, a cabbage and watercress pasta, and a garlic and watercress potato bake (basically, scalloped potatoes). I didn’t realize until just now that they all had watercress. Maybe I just really like watercress. I barely tried the desserts, probably because dinner had been so great. I wasn’t as impressed by those, but it was more that they weren’t to my taste than that they weren’t done well.
After dinner, we got on “people movers” and went to the geysers. Since it was dark, we rode there instead of walking the paths that we couldn’t see. They gave us hot chocolate and we took a seat on a few slabs of rock that were heated geothermally. We could see the geysers that were lit with flood lights and they did come through for us this time. It was lovely.
That completed the Te Puia experience and my evening. I stopped for a few groceries on the way back to my hotel. I spent some time blogging and carefully considering my next three days. I’ve made a decision on the order of events now, but it involves a gamble on the weather. The potential for having the perfect weather for all of my remaining activities in this area is possible. The necessary mix of weather is all there in the forecast but...we’ll see what marks I would get in Divination on this assignment.