At the southern end of Rotorua is the perfect place to see all of these in one spot,: Te Puia. So we drove down the very american looking road, with motels and food places to both sides to get there.
When we got to the Ticket office, initially we were shocked as the ticket to see the Geyser was 50 $.
We had seen Geysers in Iceland and were considering not going in and were nearly on the way back to the car when we realized, that we came down here to see exactly that: Geysers. And this one is one of most famous ones in New Zealand.
So we once again said: "You don't remember the money." and got ticktes. As it was only 13$ more to see the traditional Maori Cultural Display we got the combination ticket.
After a few minutes within the park it became clear that the money was well invested. The service buildings, the cafe and footpaths were all in very good condition but more importantly the main part of the profits was going towards development of the Maori Community and providing Jobs to them.
The staff behind the counter at the cafe had Maori heritage, so did the tour guides, the crafts men who displayed their craving and weaving art and even the maintenance personal was Maori.
Included in the price was a 1 hour tour with some explanation and a display of Maori Culture, which was our second stop after a very quick walk to have a look at the Geyser.
A traditional Maori community house had been erected the group of visitors that we had joined was becoming a friendly tribe that was visiting the local tribe.
We had chosen a chief who would represent us and walked towards the house to greet the half naked chief of the Maori. He had his weapon stick (the Taiaha) and waved it around doing his fearsome noises and stuck out the tongue.
It was really impressive, even from a couple of meters behind our chief and I did feel a bit like Heinrich Harrer must have felt when approaching unknown tribes.
It all became much more friendly very quickly when our chief placed a fern (pointing in the right direction) in front of him, as a sign that we came in peace.
The traditional greeting between the chiefs was performed by double touching nose against nose and soon we were all invited into the community hall where we got an 45 minute display of dances, demonstration of weaponry (which was more interesting as the dances) and of course the Haka (which is a dance but was cool).
Very impressed we left the hut again and straight away joined the guided tour through the park.
Again it was a Maori woman who explained some facts about the Geyser and we caught it right in it's full activity (reoccurring about every hour).
We passed by some mud pools, that we had seen before but enjoyed it now with commentary and continued our tour at a little hut where we should have seen little Kiwis - but we didn't because they were hiding or sleeping. As Kiwis are night active, the park had swapped around the day times, so that it was night for the Kiwis when it was daytime for us.
The last stops were the carving centre and the weaving room, where we could see how the traditional art was made (in some cases with traditional tools).
Very impressive and interesting again.
On our map of the park we saw some more mud pools and decided to visit them before returning to the car. These were just further pools and being spoilt from the geyser they disappointed us a little bit.
All in all this Te Puia Park was a little touristy but very well done and interesting and certainly worth the money (especially since my parents paid :-)).
We had done a lot of walking and had many impressions on a pretty hot day, so it was no wonder that we were pretty tired when we returned to the Motel.
After a short rest to regain a bit of energy we went out.
Not really hungry, we just walked back to the Irish pub to get a beer and a few nibbles to eat.
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