Land of the Long White Cloud

Aoteoroa, the Maori name for New Zealand, means Land of the Long White Cloud. First thing today we headed to the long white cloud formed by the steam of the thermal area condensing in the cool air of the austral autumn morning. More specifically we toured Te Puia, a park in the geothermal area owned and operated by the Maori. Tom’s inner geologist was in a frenzy of excitement as we waited for the eruption of the Pohutu geyser. (Pohutu means constant splashing in Maori.) Pohutu and its nearby smaller geysers and steam vents are active 2 or 3 times an hour. They began with short bursts a meter or two in height. The bursts grew taller and more frequent while the cascades to the river below splashed with increasing volume. Finally Pohutu was a column reaching to 20 meters while its companion, the Prince of Wales Feather, angled away to form a V that Churchill would have endorsed.


From Te Puia we motored to the other side of Rotorua to an attraction called the Agrodome. Any business that promises, with no winks, “intimate encounters with friendly farm animals” certainly deserved our attention for an hour or so. It proved to be an hour of wholesome entertainment as our Kiwi host shared the stage with representatives of the major sheep breeds.


He then sheared a sheep for our education and passed around the wool.

Four audience volunteers were selected to demonstrate cow milking while the shtick kept flying. Mike the border dog showed his skills with a couple of ducks, sheep being too likely to jump from the stage, then with a few other dogs demonstrated how they can control up to 3000 sheep by running on the backs of the flock. You could make this stuff up, but you had to be there to enjoy the show.
Our next stop was a nature park where we saw some of the local birds, including kiwi,

and reptiles while we walked through a forest of tree ferns. This concluded our tour bookings for the day. We stopped in to the Rotorua Museum

to learn about the eruption in 1886 of nearby Mt. Tarawera. We returned to our hotel via a path along the shore of Lake Rotorua

to Sulphur Bay, enjoying the forest and the sea birds, as well as the hydrogen sulfide which supplies the local atmosphere as well as the suspended sulfur which makes the water appear milky green.
Tomorrow we board the bus for Wellington and stage ourselves for a week in the South Island. Love to all and goodnight.