After being picked up in the rain and freezing cold yesterday morning from outside the YHA Wellington, we started our journey with a brief sightseeing drive through the capital city. For the next few days we'd be on the Magic Bus - a hop-on hop-off bus company operating across over all of New Zealand. We had customised our route to just a few days around the north island, and there weren't that many of us onboard, I was expecting a much busier bus. But it gave us all a bit more room to spread out and sleep.

After the introductions and running through the need to know bits of info, we passed through our first town of interest, Bulls, a small town near Palmerston North. Named after James Bull, the town has recently taken on a series of clever marketing puns throughout it, with the entrance marked with a sign: "Welcome to Bulls, an unforget-a-bull town like no udder". Puns included mentioning their town is live-a-bull and unforget-a-bull as well as their town folks being hospit-a-bull and befriend-a-bull. They have a fantastic museum that is memor-a-bull and visit-a-bull, and their information centre is very inform-a-bull. The town boasts several eat-a-bull places and the local diary is avail-a-bull and the local supermarket is restock-a-bull. We didn't actually stop in Bulls, but rather slowed down and noticed the various bull related signs on the side of buildings, entrances, street posters, etc. But as cheesy as they were, I still laughed at every last one of them.

Further up north we passed through Lord of the Rings country, with fairly poor views over to Mt. Doom mainly due to the miserable weather. At least we had the views from the comfort of the bus. In the trilogy of movies, Peter Jackson used Mount Ngauruhoe in the Tongariro National Park as Mt. Doom, but wasn't permitted to film the summit because the Maori hold it to be sacred. Passing by Lake Taupo, we hugged the road alongside the lake for ages, with the low cloud and mist spoiling our view quite a bit, but still managed to get an idea of the incredible size of the lake, which I'd the largest (lake) in New Zealand. We then stopped in the town of Taupo for some time to grab some lunch and take a wonder around, with not an awful lot to see, the main attractions being water activities on the lake and the much talked about Skydive above the lake. I was planning on waiting until i got to Queenstown before I threw myself out of a plane.

After lunch and a walk around, we hopped back on the bus and a short distance north of Lake Taupo, we pulled over for a photo stop of the Huka Falls - a series of waterfalls on the Waikato River, where the volume of water flowing through often approaches 220,000 litres per second. We had a bit of time there to walk along to the various view points, and watch the Huka Falls Jet Boating in action, where you get to experience 360 degree spins at incredible speeds right up close to the falls.

By the afternoon, we had arrived into Rotorua, and were greeted with an awful foul smell in the air. And this time it wasn't even Haig. Rotorua is known for its geothermal activity, and features geysers and hot mud pools. This thermal activity is sourced to the Rotorua caldera, on which the city lies. We stopped briefly at one of the mud pools to get an idea to the geothermal activity, and the foul sulphur smell that came with it. Afterwards, we had a drive around the town to give us a brief overview of where all the landmarks, shops and pubs were, and then it was a quick stop at the government gardens - a public park, partly laid out as gardens. The site is of legendary and historical importance to local Maori people, for here many significant battles have taken place.

Then it was onto the Kiwi Paka hostel, and after checking in, Haig and I decided to take a walk to the geothermal pools which we had seen from the bus. I wasn't feeling all that great, as if coming down with something, so headed to the pharmacy to get as drugged up as possible. Hopefully it wasn't get any worse - that's all I need is to spent 3 weeks in NZ being sick. After a brief walk up and down a few of the streets, we headed back to Kuirau Park and investigated In some of the hot bubbling mud pools which dot the park. The hot pools/springs are produced by the emergence of geothermally heated groundwater from the Earth's crust, and if the water is mixed with mud and clay, it is called a mud pool, of which there are were plenty around Rotorua.

That evening we had booked into a Maori cultural evening at the Tamaki Rotorua Maori Village, which involved dinner and a look into their culture. I guessed beforehand it would be fairly cheesy, kind of like the tourists to SA visiting the Zulu tribes. But glad I did it anyway. We caught the bus over to the village, and were given a brief run down by our bus driver. Each bus would be the waka (Maori canoe) on which we would arrive at the village. They would chose one chief from our bus, who had to be male, no exceptions apparently, and he would have to go through the ritual of welcome when we reached the village, accept a challenge, pass a test, and make a gift to the village chief on our behalf - to show that we came in peace, not war. And guess who happened to be chosen as chief of our tribe? That's right. Me. I was chosen as the chief of our bus waka and had to lead the tribe in various forms of song and dance. Good times.

Then once at the Tamaki Maori village, the various chiefs of the different visiting tribes (strangely enough all three of us had the first name of Mike) were asked to assemble together and we were reminded of the seriousness of the Powhiri (welcome ceremony) and we were instructed not to laugh, smile, talk or move - it's considered extremely rude. The purpose of the Powhiri is to remove the rautapu (olive leaf) of the visitors to make them one with the Maori people. It is a gradual process of the Maori and visitors coming together.

Then a blood-curdling scream rang out from the forest, followed by the warriors all in traditional dress, looking rather fearsome and all yelling out their war cries. With the three of us Mikes in the middle, we had to deal with the charging warriors up front, who were rather intimidating, more than I expected. There really was no worry of smiling or laughing. After sometime, they elected one of us to be the overall chief, and for some reason it happened to be. After some traditional Maori intimating dancing and yelling, I was challenged to accept the rautapu, which I did by picking it up, we pressed noses in traditional Maori fashion, and it was then that I was accepted and welcomed into the village. Yes, very cheesy I know, but I guess it's part of the entertainment and fun of it. Much the same I guess as visiting a Zulu tribe and watching them sing and dance for you.

Once we were welcomed, we had some time to walk around the village, hear about their traditions, take photos and get a feel of what the village must've have once been like. After a bit of time there, we were taken (with me leading my people) into the seated area and they did a few songs, dances and the haka for us. Then it was time to eat over in the fully-covered hangi pit area, where we got to view the lifting of your authentic hangi meal. Hangi is the traditional New Zealand Maori method of cooking food using heated rocks buried in a pit. To "lay a hangi" involves digging a pit in the ground, heating stones in the pit with a large fire, placing baskets of food on top of the stones, and covering everything with earth for several hours before uncovering the hangi. It had a very much smoked braai like taste to it, which was amazing, and exceptionally tender. So a good meal last night indeed.

After dinner, the three of us chiefs were invited onto the stage, and had to perform the Maori haka in front of everyone - which I thought would be a very long few minutes :) But after explaining the basic actions, called a bunch of people up from the crowd, it was a good laugh - but might stick to watching it being done by the All Blacks instead.

Once back at the hostel, we were disappointed to find the bar closed and obviously all supermarkets shut. Down by the pool table we found our bus driver, Andrea (SA guy from the bus) and a German girl having a game of pool and they had a couple of spare cold ones lying around, so problem solved :) Had a couple with them and then called it a night before our trip back down to Taupo this morning.