Oct 08

Click here to go to the photos from this part of the trip.

I stayed for two nights in a great hostel in Rotorua and I became quite accustomed to, and even fond of (in a weird way), the sulfur smell. The day after I arrived though I drove an hour and a half further northeast to the town of Whakatane on the wide Bay of Plenty to go on a boat in search of dolphins. I was the only observer in the group of about 15 people on the boat, all the rest were wetsuited up in the hopes of being able to swim with the dolphins. We met Doug, the captain of the boat (though with his Kiwi accent, his name sounded more like Dag), and a girl who would help out the people who'd be going in the water. The boat was much smaller and more basic than I thought it'd be, but it was powerful, as we found out when we headed out of the harbour and out to sea. It was a gray, wet day and we had some big waves to fight through to break out into the open water. Doug waited for the right moment and then suddenly we were going full throttle at the waves, like a plane trying to take off. It was a much bumpier ride though. We would come over the top of a wave, go airbourne, and then slam down into the bottom of the swell. It was like a wild, unnerving roller coaster ride and I was completely unprepared for it. I gripped a bar in front of me as tightly as I could and was unable to keep from squealing just about every time we lost contact with the surface of the water. I must have had such a look of absolute fear on my face. I eventually relaxed a bit (in very relative terms), though I was shaking from the adrenaline and fear. We got out into the open water and I could tell after awhile that we were getting no closer to the island offshore that Doug had planned to head towards. He eventually told us that we weren't going to the island; he had spotted a bunch of birds in the distance and the birds usually meant dolphins (the birds try to grab fish from of the dolphins). A short while later we were spotting fins in the distance and soon a pod was swimming with us, the dolphins right alongside the boat.

The next couple of hours followed a pattern: we would spot the pod of dolphins, speed over to catch up with them, pass them, stop, throw some people in the water in the hopes of them getting the swimming experience, have the dolphins all pass by in no time, grab the swimmers out of the water, and then go off to find the pod again. So the whole "swimming with dolphins" thing didn't really happen for our group, which is too bad, but even boating along with them was amazing. It was all exhausting though, especially since every time we stopped, I got queasy from the roll of the sea. I really had to keep my eyes on shore or I would have been sick, I'm sure. I was lucky, others on the boat did get sick, but fortunately Doug was very sympathetic about it and understood that not everyone has their sea legs.

Since I wasn't going to be swimming, Doug said I could sit out on the bow of the boat so I could get an even better view of the dolphins. I sat out there for quite some time, getting rather wet and cold, but it was worth it to see the dolphins darting around in front of the boat when we caught up with the pod. It was a bit freaky though to be out there when we were moving. There were times when we would hit a swell and the boat would drop from beneath me, I was pretty much suddenly standing up, and then I had to tense up my legs to stop from smacking down too hard when I met up with the boat again. Needless to say, I was sore for days in my knees and back and bum. I don't even remember how I managed to take some photos while I was out there, since I was gripping the boat railing with one hand and had the strap of my camera bag wrapped a few times around my other hand. I stupidly only took one video, but at least it was a good one. It's probably my favourite video of my entire trip (you can see a young dolphin a couple of times. It's amazing how they can keep up with the adults, but I guess it's a matter of survival):

Doug finally decided we'd chased the dolphins around long enough and we then headed to the nearby island where he said there was calm water, so those of us with unhappy tummies could finally settle down. It was lovely over there, the sun even started to come out (leaving me with a sunburnt face), and we saw other wildlife, like seals and nesting birds. We stopped for awhile, and Doug and the girl passed around snacks and warm drinks and everyone felt a lot better. We headed back into Whakatane, and after all of the stress I was starving, so I got some fish and chips next to the harbour. Doug boated past, probably on the way to dock the boat, and he saw me and gave a friendly wave.

Amazingly, that same evening (after the 1 1/2 hour drive back to Rotorua, and despite being so exhausted) I went to a Maori dinner called a hangi. I imagine it's quite similar to going to a hula show in Hawaii, it's a way for tourists to learn a bit about the native culture of New Zealand. There's the dinner, but also performances and explanations about traditional weapons and customs. It was on the edge of town, so a bus drove around Rotorua to pick people up. As I waited for the bus, I ended up chatting with a fellow traveller, a guy from Canada. I had guessed he was also waiting to go to the hangi, and we ended up hanging out the rest of the evening. It was always good when travelling alone to have a break from being on your own. The bus showed up, driven by a guy with a rather cheesy sense of humour who was asking us all where we were from and such. He ended up being the host of our group for the dinner; there was another group in another room and we ate separately, but came together for the performances. As we settled into the dining room and had drinks, the host found out what countries were represented by our group. There were 18 different nationalities there and he named us the Tribe of Many Nations. What was also pretty cool was that for each country, he was able to say a few phrases in that country's language, usually "How are you?" with a few other words or phrases thrown in. Amonsgt others, he did French, Spanish, Afrikaans, Dutch (the phrase he threw out then was "dank u voor de bloemen", heh), Japanese, and the one that impressed me, Hungarian. I think even the Hungarians were impressed. I heard the host later tell someone that a guy from Texas was there once and said that if he could learn a few words and phrases in the 80 or so major languages in the world, the Texan would fly him to the US and get him on Letterman. He knows about 40 or 50 now, and that's taken 7-8 years, so it wouldn't take much more to get to 80.

Before we went to see the performances and enter the Maoris' home, we needed a tribe leader to accept their offering and show we were there in peace. An Australian ended up being our leader and representing us when we met up with the Maori tribe. We then headed towards where the performances would take place, which took us on a beautiful walk through a forest. There was a spring there with the clearest water, and then we lined up along the sides of the stream that ran from the spring and watched some of the Maori men arrive on canoe.

We then entered the performance area and the offerings were given, first to our tribe chief, then the other group's chief.

They did a couple of hakas, a traditional dance with a lot of intimidating postures and shouting. Women did a poi dance, which uses balls on strings which are swung around very fast. Then we had dinner and another walk through the forest looking for glowworms, before being taken back to Rotorua.