After our long hike yesterday (I can't believe it was yesterday!) and our lovely evening where we tried to move as little as possible it's amazing we were able to move at all this morning.
I did have my alarm go off and then I proceeded to stay in bed for another hour, but this airbnb - now with power! did have heated blankets as well so sleeping with that helped. Also, I'm getting a heated blanket. Not here, but once I'm back in the states. Those things are amazing.
Anyways.
Slept very well (wonder why) and was even able to move this morning. But it was time to go anyways, so we had our breakfast, cleaned up, and departed. 10/10, would recommend this place if anyone wants to stay in Ohakune, New Zealand.
But we weren't quite done with the town yet!
We had to stop by a place called Carrot Park.
It's a kids playground that has carrot theming. A giant 20ft tall carrot, a carrot rocket ship, a carrot racecar, carrot slide....surprisingly long and it picked up speed. It was a brief stop. We had seen this place for 2 days already, we couldn't skip it on the third.
Don't worry, I got out of there before parents had to kick me outta the spaceship. (JK, I never sat in it.)
We swung by the Tongariro Alpine Crossing sign for one last,
"Holy Shit we did that." moment.
We did that!
before my watch died (which is to say right at the end) it said I had climbed like 272 floors?
I'm very proud of myself still.
But then we continued on to Rotorua
We pretty much went straight there- stopped at a scenic place to stretch our legs, but we wanted to get to town kinda early.
And we only had a few slow downs on the roads. When we saw people working, it was chill
but when the semi is going 50 km/h for no discernible reason? Just cringe.
When we got to Rotorua, it was a bit too early for check in, so we went to a park that has some geothermal pools.
Unfortunately, Rotorua just...smells.
Not all of it obviously,but the volcanic stuff just makes most of the park smell like sulfur.
But we did see some Pukekos and the park IS pretty to look at.
The main event of our day though was our dinner. The reason we wanted to get to our airbnb right at check in and ourselves sorted.
We went to a Maori Cultural Tour and dinner. We got on a quick bus to a maori village where the went into decent detail about the meaning behind carvings, buildings, tattoos, tribal warfare, food, song, language, history, dance and haka. It was 4 hours and it was awesome.
Learned a lot, had some amazing food, and I wish I had a better base of knowledge so that I could have asked good questions.
I did sorta participate when they asked for volunteers. Did a foot drill thing (it was that ladder thing you see football players do a lot, but their version) and practiced my maori weapon fighting (It's a lot like quarter-staff.)
It was awesome. And bonus, I swear I saw a Kingsfisher bird.
So the Te Pa Tu (the experience was called) was super cool .
I am curious about these sort of things. About if there are any....feelings about how these cultural traditions are being commodified for the tourism...if they even see it like that? They said they were happy to share their culture with us, but I wonder.
But however they feel about it, they shared it with us and I did have a wonderful time. Tomorrow will be a light day - we're finally going to a spa!
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