Kiwi Experience Part 2

The next day we headed towards Rotorua, a city renowned for its geothermal activity and its Maori cultural experiences. One our way to Rotorua we took a brief break at Matamata, a town better known worldwide as Hobbiton. We didn’t have the time to take one of the many Lord of the Rings tours being offered from Matamata but perhaps that is something we’ll do next time were in New Zealand.

New Zealand is located on the Ring of Fire, an arc stretching along the eastern edge of Asia, to Alaska and along the west coast of America. Situated along this arc are more than 75% of the world’s volcanoes. The Ring of Fire is the border of the Pacific Plate and other tectonic plates that form the earth’s crust. Where these plates meet, they move and create a large amount of energy that is released as a geothermal activity.

During our stay in Rotorua we spent almost a full day at Te Puia, a geothermal park and cultural center. The Whakarewarewa geothermal valley is adjacent to Te Puia and we were able to walk around and tour the hot mud pools, the geysers, the kiwi house, the Maori village and craft centers (wood carving and weaving).

I wish we had been able to photograph the kiwis but because they are nocturnal (like so many of the animals in this region) the enclosure was dark. Kiwis are flightless, their feathers are more like fur, and about the size of a chicken. I was pretty amazed at their size, I was expecting something small and fluffy. Kiwis are hardly seen in the wild and there are several kiwi breeding programs all over the country to ensure the Kiwis’ survival.

At Te Puia we were able to see a Maori ceremony and a group of Maori performers entertained us with Maori songs and dances. We also sampled a Maori hangi for lunch. A hangi, refers to the Maori cooking method where meat and vegetables are steamed for hours in an earth oven. Until Europeans settled in New Zealand there weren’t any mammals in the country, and so birds played a big part in Maori diet (and a great deal of clothing was made from bird feathers).

There were many things we wanted to see and do in Rotorua but since we only had week to travel around the North Island the buried village (something like Pompeii) and other geothermal parks will have to wait until we return to New Zealand.