Our first stop on our cruise is Tauranga, New Zealand. We all have tours that at some point include a visit to Hell’s Gate, which we couldn’t miss just based on its name. Gigi is planning to stay on the ship all day and I load her up with Joe Bonamassa concerts to watch. I mean lets face it….. that’s pretty F'ingham (inside joke) cool that my mom at 86 is into Blues Rock guitar.
The procedure for all tours is you are given a meeting time where we gather in the Vista showroom awaiting our number to be called indicating we can get our tour sticker and make our way down the gangplank to the bus. Today we are to meet at 8:15 am. Deb and Joe and Gigi are here, but where are Steve and Fran? We booked identical tours while sitting around our dining room table months ago. They call our number and Joan frantically calls them where they say they thought they had until 9am. Joan says we are headed to the bus you better hurry down.
We all go through and get our stickers and are escorted to two different buses but still no Fran or Steve. Joan is gettting nervous and soon the buses close up and away we go. Joan says I can’t believe they missed the tour!
Our first stop is a place to see the ever elusive Kiwi Bird. It is another tourist trap but they do have a rescue shelter for Kiwi Birds along with a nocturnal shelter that you can walk through and see kiwi birds. But first everyone must line up for their Magic photo holding their hands in front of them where by the miracles of photo shop they will insert a Kiwi Bird. Later we are offered a booklet souvenir with our personalized photo holding the mischevious little beast for a mere $50. NO Thanks…...
Down the path past some reptiles and onto the Kiwi enclosure which is pretty cool. Talk about your oddball bird. It is a wingless featherless bird with nostrils at the end of its beak. It is nocturnal and runs very fast. They were once legends as it is so difficult to actually find one.
The Kiwi Bird may be ellusive but Kiwi Fruit is everywhere. We pass massive orchards as we are on our way to a Maori encounter and feast. Kiwi is not a tree but grown on vines and planted like a vineyard. They essential create a tent top pattern to grown the golden kiwi.
When we get to the Maori Village we are taken to where we will have our feast to drop off our bags. Several appropriate jokes are made by our Guide about the cannabalism that was associated with Maori and how he welcomes us all for lunch as he rubs his tummy.
Like a luau in Hawaii, the traditional Maori feast is also cooked in the ground. It consists of local fish and bird with potatoes and sweet potatoes buried with hot stones and cooked all day. We go to where our feast has been prepared and cooked acccording to modern regulations. Also, easier to get chicken and pork from the supermarket than catch fish and birds. We already said how ellusive the Kiwi is.
This tribe of Maoricame from the South Pacific Islands, Hawaii, Fiji, Philippines. They came in massive 220 person canoes that they would strap two together and put up a sail. Follow the stars and you will arrive in 43 sleeps. Not much to go on but they made it. This tribe settled in the north isand of New Zealand and followed the coast line to the south.
We walk along a heavily forested trail where we pass by their natural spring that bubbles up from the earth providing fresh water all these hundresds of years.
The guide comes by and singles Joe out of the crowd and leads him away. we are about to be greated by the Maori warriors.
The wariors arrive and great our party by canoe with chants and fierce looks.
Joe is annoited Chief of our Cruise Ship tribe and will represent us at the greating spot where he will have to face the warriors challenge to see if we coe in peace or war.
Lunch was surprisingly good chased down with a local New Zealand ale. All the food had a nice smokey taste to it.
having completed our meal we were back on the bus to go to Hell’s Gate, a natural hot springs and suffer springs surrounded by rainforest. I am sure Steve and Fran would have loved this entire experience and we’ll show them pictures of what they missed by being tardy….. so unlike them.
The moment you step off the bus you are hit with the poerfull oder of thousands of rotten eggs. It is clear the only way to get through this is to stop breathing through ones nose.
New Zealand is essentially a dormant set of volcanoes. Hell’s Gate is where there are fissure that let the magma get cloose enough to vent and to have spring water flow through the craks to become superheated and and rise to the surface as mud pots, sulfer steam, or hot spring waters. This is an ancient holy ground as these springs are medicinal to cure a variety of ailments. 
Our guide shares that the mud cn take years of aging away from your hands if you rub them with the dirt. Joan takes a clod or two and as she rubs it in her hands, it liquifies and she coates her entire hands with it. As she continues to rub and it this out it changes into powder and soon is just dust in the wind. We all tell her her hands now look like 5 year olds.
No one take the guide up on her offer for a facial mud pack.
Walking past the mud pots, steam holes, and sulfer fumes, we enter into the rain forest for a short walk up hill to explore the flora and fauna.
Fantastic day. Don’t know what happened to Steve and Fran but we know Jeff and Babs also visited the Hells Gate and some other geysers. Time to journey back to the ship where we will gather for dinner and swap stories.
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