Mother Nature Cooks Lunch

I took a day trip to Rotorua on Thursday. It is a bit of a drive and in hindsight, I should have made my way there on my own, and stayed a day or two. Oh well, live and learn.

We drove through the beautiful green New Zealand countryside. It is probably just as you imagine it - peaceful, tidy with lots of sheep and cows. Inland and south of Auckland it was colder, so lots of frost around. We were diverted by a terrible accident on a frosty corner. Later in the day we saw another car flipped over on a similar corner.



























We arrived safely at Te Whakarewarewa village near Rotorua. The shorter name is Whaka, the longer one is just ridiculous. The village itself is quaint and cute, and there is steam everywhere, plus the faint smell of sulfur.

Steam vents are everywhere, including people's backyards. There are also boiling ponds, bubbling mud pools and geysers.














After a tour of the village, we were treated to a traditional show of Maori song and dance. As soon as it started, I had a smile on my face, as it sounded something like the sounds of Hawaii. I realize what a wonderful time in my life Hawaii was (not to also mention now, and this amazing trip.














After the show, there was some time to take more pictures, then we sat down to a traditional hangi meal that had been cooking for a good part of the morning. The meats are wrapped in foil, and steamed in wooden boxes build over certain steam vents. The vegetables are wrapped up in bags, and placed in some of the hottest pools that boil constantly. The food was simple, delicious and fun.














After lunch we toured the Rotorua area, including the large lake. We also stopped by Zorb-Rotorua, where people strap themselves into large plastic spheres and role down hills and over bumps. Nobody was zorbing when we got there, and I was not about to lose my hangi lunch, so we did not get any pictures. These Kiwis sure think of crazy ways to entertain themselves.

Our last stop of the day was at the Waitomo Caves, famous for the glowworm experience. We toured the caves with a guide, then got into a boat on a river that flows right through the caves. It was now completely silent, and pitch black, except for the blue starlight galaxies of glowworms on the cave ceiling. It was an eerie, surreal and totally unique experience.

The glowworms hatch out of eggs on the cave ceiling, and immediately eat their nearby siblings. They drop lines of sticky thread, and start to glow. This attracts insects in the dark caves, who get caught in the threads, and are then reeled in by the glowworms for a meal. They grow for about 8 months on this diet, go into the pupa stage, and then hatch as a large fly. The fly has no mouth, so it starves to death in a couple of days; just enough time to lay some more eggs and start the cycle again.