Day 19 - Road to Rotorua

Monday, May 4, 2009

After experience what the night life and driving was like of Auckland, we decided to get the hell out Dodge and go on a relaxing road trip down South. This road lead to many small towns and wonderful scenery that I would image New Zealand to be like.

Our main goal was going to Rotorua, but we made a little side trip to Hamilton. This is a fairly large farming and cattle area, but the reason why we made this side trip was to visit the LDS New Zealand Temple. If you are LDS you know the wonder of these buildings. If you are not LDS (common name is Mormon), that shouldn't stop you from viewing the beauty of the temples. The grounds were wonderful and the temple missionaries that serve there don't live to far from us. Actually, they used to be neighbors to a friend of mine. So to Kristin Barber, you're old neighbors the Hitchins say "Hi".

We then set back on the road to Rotorua where we'd have our Maori experience. Here we took a tour bus to a small village where we got to see and learn about the native Polynesian culture of the Maoris. We had an excellent tour guide, even though she made everyone from different countries to get up and sing a song in their language that is significant to their country. Unlucky us, we were the only Americans on the bus. BTW - we ended up singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" and thank goodness many more joined in on the singing. We had so many different representative of countries on the bus... I loved it! We had British, Irish, Aussie, Dutch, Indian, Scottish, Canadians and of course some mainlanders from New Zealand. My only upset was that the British boys didn't sing a Beatles song.

Three hours later on a long drive, we're back to our hotel, but it was a great road trip. The Maori people are beyond remarkable! I highly suggest looking up their history and traditions or better yet make a trip down here to New Zealand to experience it yourself ;-)