Despite staying up late into the night with our girls talk, we managed to drag ourselves to wake up at 7am...we quickly got ready and lugged our luggage to the bus station...Cam, Jeanne and I were taking the 8am Nakedbus to Rotorua...needless to say, i slept most of the 4 hours-journey...totally missed whatever great view there was along the way...we went to the isite in Rotorua to book our tickets for the Mitai Village tour, YHA room and the LOTR tour in Wellington...we then left out luggage at the YHA (Jeanne was a bit pissed off at the reception guy coz he was quite rude) and started exploring the town...
We went to the Rotorua Museum which used to be a bath house...the building was quite Victorian...filled with cubicles of bath...apparently they used 2 types of water i.e. alkaline and free acid water which were claimed to have healing properties...the whole place reeked of hydrogen sulphide...whew!!! we saw a 20 minutes documentary about Rotorua and its volcanic eruption and the seats actually moved and shook when they showed the part on the volcanic eruption...that kinda kept Cam and i awake...then we watched another 30 minutes documentary about the 28 Maori Battalion...hehe, Cam and i totally fell asleep...we also went up to the roof which offered a great view of the town...tried to take lots of pictures but it was too windy to stay up there too long...
We went back to the YHA to check in at about 5pm..our triple room cost nzd93 per night...then waited for our pick-up to the Mitai Village for a night of Maori experience...that cost us NZD99 per person...by the time we got to the Mitai Village, we were quite hungry...but dinner was only served after the Maori performance...so we had to settle for our free drink to keep us from getting hypoglycaemic...our host was a very lively and interesting guy who told us that the Maori language has a lot of similiarities with the Malay language...how interesting...he showed us our Hangi dinner... a traditional way of roasting meat such as chicken, beef and lamb and potatoes and kumaras (sweet potatoes) over really really burning hot stones...gosh, that got me even hungrier...
Then we went to the river to watch the Maoris coming in their canoe...and watched the cultural performance...finally it was dinner time...and it was a buffet dinner...yipeee!!! they had chicken, beef, lamb, potatoes, kumara, salad and truffles and chocolate log for dessert...totally loaded on the lamb and kumaras...they were so yummy...after dinner, we had a bush-walk around the village...saw some glow worms...saw the source of the village water spring...actually drank a bit from it too...the host showed us a rainbow trout but i could hardly see its colours in the dark...after that, we were sent back to our YHA...had a nice warm shower in the common bathroom...then after talking a bit, all of us fell asleep...
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