Kiwi Day 3 - Waitomo to Rotorua / 28.01.2019

Today we set off early on the bus from Waitomo to Rotorua because there were still some cool stops planned.
First, we took a short detour to the Ruakuri Caves, where we did the black water rafting yesterday, to take a walk through the bush. Everything was incredibly green and in some places we could see the caves from the inside again. But even though it was only about 9 am, it was already very muggy and hot, and I wondered why I was looking forward to colder weather in Australia - this was not it.

After that, we drove about an hour and a half to the Hobbiton Movie Set, which we were all excited about. We went on a tour of the hilly landscape, where over 40 small hobbit houses were built. A guide told us a lot about this filming location for The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies, including how perfectionistic everything was - the leaves of a tree over Bilbo's house, which was only seen for a few seconds in the movies, were completely sprayed again just because the color of the leaves was a bit too dark.
Iris and I took turns taking pictures of each other while admiring the cute gardens, laundry lines, and colorful round doors. At the end, we got a free cider at the Dragon Inn and a delicious special hobbit ice cream. The whole place was very impressive and everyone was happy.

In the afternoon, we arrived in Rotorua and our first stop was the Tamaki Maori Village, where some of us, including me, would sleep tonight and learn more about the culture of the indigenous people of New Zealand. Lukas and Talea were also there, unfortunately Iris said she was too tired, but she would still come for dinner later. We dropped off the others at their hostels until we came back to the village and now we were under pressure to choose a song to perform during the welcome ritual, because it was a tradition for the two meeting tribes to perform songs to establish peace between each other. We were now also a tribe, the Noho Marae (Overnight Stay), when we entered the Maori territory and we also needed a male chief.

One of the English guys (Tom), who was okay - and whom we chose as our chief because it was his birthday today - suddenly started singing the first verse of Can't Take My Eyes off of You by Frankie Valli loudly into our bus driver Guy's microphone - aka Quagsmire - and I recognized his pretty good voice from the caves, then the others joined in with DADA DADA DADA DADADA, and finally we all sang out loud the I LOVE YOU, BABY refrain, confirming our song.

When we arrived, a friendly Maori greeted us, whose name I unfortunately forgot, and told us that he would take care of us today and show us everything. But before we could go through the big fancy gate with the big grimaces on it (I later learned that those were the gods of the indigenous people), a Maori woman performed a song to keep all of our negative energy outside. Then we went in - the chiefs first, then the girls, as they were the most important in the tribe (if a warrior died, it was only one, but if a girl died, a whole future generation might die with her) and then the boys, to the jungle area where we were led to some benches. There, in a foreign sounding speech, we were recognized as a tribe, a song was sung to us, and then we had to perform our song, which worked better than expected and was well received. Finally, our chief Tom shook hands with the Maori and then they pressed their noses together as a sign of respect and exchanging the first breath. This ritual is called Hongi and now we were all part of the tribe, which also meant that we had to eat together.

So first we had delicious cake in the dining hall, where we all chatted, and then we learned a traditional stick game. We all stood in a circle, were given long sticks, and threw them in different sequences to our right neighbor and then to the person 2 seats away, without dropping the sticks. Unfortunately, we couldn't do it, but it was a lot of fun.

After that, we learned a quite famous Maori song: A Haka Mana. Here are the lyrics:
A haka mana para tawa ngawha
E heke mene pere tewe ngewhe
I hiki mini piri tiwi ngiwhi
O hoko mono poro towo ngowho
A - E - I - O - U
U huku munu puru tuwu nguwhu.
Apparently, this is how the school children learn the alphabet. We were accompanied on the guitar and were told to perform it during dinner.

It was very cool to be alone with the Maori, as we were afraid it would be too touristy - but that only happened later when about 130 other people came for the evening performances and dinner. Here, the different tribes gathered for a welcome ceremony, and the chiefs had to step forward and receive a peace offering in the form of a fern leaf from the warriors while they performed their war dances, accepting it and thus being welcomed. Then we all learned various things about the culture together, for example, that the Maori always stuck out their tongues to show their enemies that if they defeated them, they had the ability to literally turn them into shit. So sticking out the tongue is one of the worst insults here and in the past, for example, when one tribe defeated the chief of another tribe, the chief really ate from the dead to symbolize power and superiority to the enemies.

Later, there were a few more song performances and the warriors performed the Haka, a ritual war dance with lots of tongue showing and big wild eyes, and then finally dinner was served. We all sat in the big dining hall - unfortunately Iris couldn't sit with us because each tribe had to sit separately - and there were various potato dishes, meat, vegetables, bread, salad, and even fish and mussels, which I didn't eat. Overall, it was very delicious and when it was our turn to perform the A Haka Mana, everyone applauded and it went well.

When everyone except us had left, we went to our accommodations - 2 large houses with many beds lined up (unfortunately we were in a room with the English guys), got some warmer clothes, and then went to the bar, where the English guys were already drunk and the rest of us played some cool drinking games - including Bus Driver - and Quags, our bus driver, also played with us, and now I can say that I played Bus Driver with a bus driver, which is funny.

Eventually, Vaiana songs started playing and I had to sing along and smirk when I caught that English guy Tom singing along too.
There were also hot tubs, but our group unfortunately forgot their swimwear on the bus, but we still had a lot of fun - until around midnight, when big fat screeching beetles started gathering and flying into our hair. I decided to go to bed around 1 am, where some others were already, and of course, the English guys came an hour later and made a lot of noise for about an hour, so I almost punched all of them.
Eventually, I fell asleep and all the carved gods above our beds protected us in our dreamland.

Song of the day: Can't Take My Eyes off of You by Frankie Valli, for obvious Maori welcome ritual reasons.