Biking, Spas, and Maori Culture

Well, New Zealand is totally awesome. So far we've done Rotorua and Paihia. We head to Auckland tomorrow.

Mountain Biking
Yesterday, ArmaJillo and I went mountain biking with Jeff (family friend of Jill's). He took us to this awesome park and we rented bikes. As it turns out, biking combines 2 things that I am most terrified of: 1. moving at high speeds in an unenclosed space and 2. potential to knock my teeth out. At first, I was definitely not having fun. I was dodging trees, braking down hills and trying to not get TOO far behind. After a while, though, I decided I needed to stop thinking about what I was doing and just look at it as exercise. That made it a lot more fun. It also made hamfoot (the name of my sprained ankle) feel a lot better. (Yeah, the ol' ankle is still not better.)

Spa!
After biking, Jill and I went to the Polynesian Bath House. This place was awesome. Rotorua is a geological hot spot and there are a boat load of natural springs. We soaked in some sulfur pools for a while and it made for a very relaxing afternoon.

Sheep World
We left Rotorua yesterday morning to drive up to the top of the island to Paihia (which is in the Bay of Islands). On our way, we stopped at Sheep World. THIS PLACE WAS AWESOME. Not only did I get to pet a little lamb, but I got to feed emu right out of my hands. Some of the sheep were also dyed pink.

A Looong Road
It took us about 6 hours to drive up here (not including the stop in Sheep World). Our GPS took us the most ridiculous backwoods route possible. Once we arrived, though, we checked into our hostel. It's actually really nice. Someone also left a romance novel in the room, so I've been reading that. It's about a Sydney billionaire playboy and his former stepsister.

After we checked in, we decided to go to the bar next door for some nachos. We loved this place. The bartender, Derek, was really cool. It was just the three of us for most of the night, so we talked to him for a really long time. He's a fisherman so he showed us a book of some of his catches. They caught a great white one time that's jaws were big enough to fit 2 people. He also talked to us about aliens (outerspace aliens), ghosts and welfare. I think we're going back tonight.

Maori
Today, we headed up to the culture center and caught a traditional Maori performance. It was one of the coolest things I have ever seen in my entire life. The music was beautiful, the movements were really cool and the performers were really fun.

We also received a guided tour of the grounds. It was just the tour guide, Jillaroo and me. I took a ridiculous amount of pictures.

Dead Pig
We saw a dead pig on the shore today. It was really weird.

Well, I'm out of internet time. I'll do another update at some point with more information on the Maori things we saw. It was really amazing.