Long-time readers will recall that my most thoughtful, contemplative posts occur when I’m bedded in somewhere, like an isolated Irish cottage, or hilltop Italian farmhouse for a while, or at home, looking out at the mountains across a trackless snowscape. This, as the title suggests, is not one of those posts.

Ready?

So where were we? Right – Napier.

The morning we woke up in Napier, at whatever holiday park it was that we’d chosen, was Waitangi Day. It’s the day that for some celebrates – for others commemorates – the ‘founding’ of New Zealand. Sort of the opposite of our Fourth of July, if you get the gist: it was the day on which the ranking Maori tribal chiefs signed a treaty recognizing Aotearoa as a Crown colony. As you might expect, it’s a national holiday that evokes rather mixed emotions.

Looking around the Napier/Hawke’s Bay region revealed mostly celebrations involving carnival rides and line dancing. We…decided to look a bit further afield. Found that Te Puia, the Maori Culture Center on the outskirts of Rotorua, was having a celebration with food, music and cultural activities. We were planning on spending the next evening in Rotorua, so off we went.

It turns out that “te puia” translates in English to “the geyser.” Because it, the Rotorua region and, oh heck, pretty much the whole country is geologically active. Remember? New Zealand. In fact, Lake Rotorua is, after all, a collapsed caldera, and the general olfactory sensation anywhere around town is the brimming scent of sulphur. So beyond the cultural center, the principal attraction of Te Puia is a set of mud pools, and geysers that blow off steam every hour or so.

Devon looked up details and bought tickets while I drove. We settled on the combined “guided geyser and cultural experience” package, and arrived minutes before the tour was set to start. Gotta say, the guided geyser experience was…a thing, but we probably could have gotten as much just by walking it ourselves.

On the other hand, the “cultural experience” bit was educating, and great fun. No pictures this time, alas – for some reason I didn’t think to pull the phone out.

Our hosts described how we were going to be “welcomed into a Maori wharenui” (meeting house), but first our “chief” (a randomly selected guy who failed to step backwards quickly enough when a volunteer was called for) would be challenged by a warrior of the tribe we were visiting. The warrior would approach in as threatening and bellicose manner as possible, and our chief was to maintain an unflinching poker face. Only if he showed himself fearless yet respectful would we be admitted. Yes, extremely hokey in principle, but in practice, a gorgeous demonstration of athletic prowess and dance.

The “warrior” was a smaller man than I had expected, but he seemed to float, barely touching the ground as he bounded toward and away from our “chief” while spinning and bracing his taiaha – a traditional fighting staff. He made the traditional wide-eyed-and-tongue-out “we’re gonna eat you” intimidation gestures, dancing and spinning and floating and bounding up and down the path. Then, apparently satisfied, he placed a sprig of fern on the ground for our “chief” to pick up and retreated. We were allowed to enter. You can find plenty of YouTube videos of the songs and poi and taiaha dances, and the haka that followed. As I said, in theory totally hokey, but in the moment, it was impressive and great fun to watch.

We stayed on for the remains of the general celebration, but things were clearly winding down once we were done with the whole wharenui thing, so we wandered into town itself. A lakeshore walk, another little Waitangi Day festival, dinner and a foot soak in the thermal pools of the town park. But we called it an early evening, because tomorrow was going to be Adventure Day.

Most folks who have come across Rotorua in their readings have picked it up as the adrenaline center of the North Island – bungee jumping, zip lines and ropes and plummeting experiences in general. Plus, it is where the Zorb was invented. The what? Patience.

We began the morning with a gentle stroll through Rotorua’s expansive and mature redwood forest. Wait – “mature”? Aren’t redwoods non-native?!? Full marks. They were planted here only about 125 years ago as an experiment, but something about the local climate and soil made them grow about 5-10 times faster than they do in their native soil. As a result, they’ve reached what looks like maturity in a mere century, but the growth spurt means that their wood isn’t dense enough to be commercially interesting. Which is, in fact, what has saved them from being logged for timber.

So the walk: lovely and relaxing, even if we were doing it 75 feet above the ground. Oh, did I mention that this forest walk was along a series of rope bridges and suspended platforms? Yes, yes, we were bolted into safety lines the whole way. There were a few zipline traverses, too.

All in all we were up in the trees for about two hours, guided by Michelle and Scott, who interspersed our getting-from-here-to-there instructions with a gentle and informative introduction to the biology of the canopy. Great fun, two thumbs up, would recommend to any visitor.

Then? Couldn’t leave Rotorua without trying the Zorbs. The what? Okay, take an enormous beach ball and suspend another beach ball inside it. Put a little hatch in that allows you to get to the middle and slosh it about 1/4 full of water. Wait – why? Put a human, or two or three inside and seal it up. I’m not following you. Then roll it downhill along an obstacle course that has it bounce all the heck over the place. Again: wait – why?!? Take them all back up the hill and repeat as necessary. Shakes head. Get a bit bored and build a whole ski-area like park with different “runs” and a lift and warming hut.

There are, in fact, Zorb parks where you can even team up against friends in an Indiana-Jones-style race, where a couple of you are in the big sloshy ball, and a couple of you are running downhill ahead of it, trying to see how far you can get before you have to dodge, or get flattened by your careening former besties. Welcome to New Zealand.

Anyhow, I had to try it. Devon, for many reasons*, decided to sit the ride out.

(* Principally, she has common sense and isn’t male.)

I went for the try-them-all package (see parenthetical note above), and the experience was pretty much as you might expect. Video here – would Zorb again.

Okay, I think that’s enough for now. One more catch-up post to come: Waitomo – caverns and glow worms.