Rotorua

As promised, I have uploaded some pics of my time in Rotorua. The first two are from Whakarewarewa (aka Whaka) where about 80 Maori still live in a thermal village amongst the bubbling mud pools and the boiling hot pools continually blanketing the village in steam (which are good for the pores apparently). Sadly there's also a stench of sulpher and rotten eggs - even worse than Middlesbrough.

The local villagers show you round in some sort of co-operative, so were telling us how they still use the hot water to cook and bathe even though they have cookers and showers in their houses. Some of the vents were boxed up, so you could steam meat and veg and there were muslin bags on the end of string in some of the pools, to boil veg, eggs or whatever. Apparently the whole village washes together, naked in the open air - I can't see that taking off in Bensham or Rhayader.







Also a pic of me in the Priest pool at the Polynesian Spa in Rotorua, overlooking the appropriately named Sulpher Bay. You can see that the Scottish lady who took the picture very cleverly made it look as if a seagull was landing on my head...

Things I have leant:

Quite a few New Zealand men have no problems in striking up a conversation if you stand next to them at a urinal in a pub.