Kim and Zak are relentless in the pursuit of vacation excellence and even though none of us had pockets deep enough for the $150/head Maori cultural show and dinner, they had the the instincts to pull into a Maori cultural village and ask if we could see the gift shop. We immediately met Aroha who told us the gift shop was closed because the nightly show was starting.

But after chatting with us a few minutes and determining the very sad level of Maori cultural understanding in our midst, she took pity on us and snuck us in to watch the welcoming ceremony called the “challenge,” where a dangerous looking, wild-eyed warrior was screaming quite menacingly and threatening to skewer us in the traditional method.

During the performance various senior staff kept trying to throw us out but Aroha would not back down. She called us “her people” and “borrowed” a full-sized tour bus to drive the 4 of us around to the back entrance of the property, where she unlocked some fences and told us to blend into the crowd who were making their way among the live village displays (here’s one of them – the little house on stilts in the background is a traditional food storage unit).

We learned a lot about these fierce and hardy island dwellers and their way of life.

At each break in the program we expected to leave but Aroha would hustle us off to the next venue. We got to watch a concert (Zak got video) and see the unearthing of the Maori “hangi,” an underground oven similar to the Tongan umu.

 

We left the paying crowd to stuff themselves with these rock grilled chickens and lambs, while we went to have dinner at the Indian restaurant next to a stretch table of what must’ve been Rotorua’s complete population of transvestites having a birthday party. But that is another story.