Agrodome, Rotorua

My favorite part of our Rotorua adventure was the visit to the Agrodome. We went to a sheep show. I know, you may be thinking, "how in the world could that have been your favorite part of your trip?" Well, watch this video, and you'll see part of the show that I thought was especially entertaining.

There are 19 different types of sheep that we heard about during the show.  Do you think I can remember their names?  No, but they are listed here if you're really interested.  

This was our presenter and he did the shearing for us.  It looks like such a difficult job and they do it for about 12 hours a day.  Yuck!  

Sophia and I were really into watching the shearing.

Travis and Sophia got called up on stage to do a contest.  At first I thought she was going to cry, because she kept looking at me in the crowd when she first went on stage, but she did fine.  They were all given a bottle to feed a lamb with, and since Travis has some good lamb feeding experience, they won the contest!  For their prize they won some wool that had been shorn off the sheep earlier in the show.  Now all I have to do is wash it, comb it, and spin it and I can knit something out of it (yeah right!).  

Maori Rotorua

Rotorua has a pretty high concentration of Maori people. The Maori people were the ones who made it here before the British. They probably came here from an island in Polynesia in large canoes. They named the land Aotearoa, meaning "land of the long white cloud." Very fitting, I would say.

We were able to see a Maori show while we were in Rotorua.  I have seen these on TV before, but never live.  Their voices sounded amazing in person.  They are wearing traditional Maori outfits and singing in the Maori language.  

In this photo, you may be able to see the white balls being swung around by the women.  They use these in different dances and they are called Poi.  I wish I would have gotten a video of them dancing with those, because it was pretty amazing.

This photo shows some traditional Maori art.  When they would get ready for battle, they would open their eyes really wide and stick out their tongues.  The different swirly designs usually show their family line.

Rotorua

We got back from Rotorua (nicknamed Roto-Vegas and Sulphur City) last night, after quite a long ride in the car. No offense to Rotorua, but I'm not sure how soon I'll be heading back there. It's a great place to go if you have a lot of money to spend, because everything there costs money to do! Ok, not everything, but most everything. And it smells like sulphur, which did not agree with me. I am glad I finally got to go though! I have never been to Yellowstone park in the states, so it was cool for me to see all these weird geothermal things going on.

This is the Pohutu Geyser located in Whakarewarewa geothermal reserve.  We got to see it erupting, but I didn't get a very good photo of that.  The orange and yellow colors are from the sulphur in the water as it runs down.

This photo may not look like anything spectacular, but I could not stop staring at it!  It's a boiling mud pool.  So weird.  It makes me wonder what God was thinking when he made all these strange things.  

This is just another area that had steam vents coming up from the ground.  It was nice and warm and of course smelled awful!

Steam from the geyser as the sun was setting.  

We ate dinner at the Fat Dog after visiting the geothermal area and seeing a Maori show.  We were so tired we were barely able to talk during dinner.  I ordered a pasta dish and Sophia really liked the noodles and just kept eating them and eating them!  I think she almost swallowed them whole, but they seemed to slide right down the hatch.  She ate them twice the next day as well.  The Fat Dog had funny poems written along the walls and it was very colorful inside.  I guess I should have snapped a photo of that!  Oh well.  More Rotorua photos to follow...