New Zealand 7: Members, and Kiwis, and Wetas, oh my!

Sunday morning, February 18, 2018, we drove down to Rotorua to attend the Fairy Springs Ward. The web site had the times wrong on the wards meeting there, so we were a little late to sacrament meeting, but we enjoyed meeting with the members there.

There was a big family history display in the lobby.

I thought this quote was funny.

 Many of the members there are of Maori descent.

I thought this guy's cane was awesome.

After Sunday School, Melissa Lym stood up for a moment. Unbeknownst to her, someone moved her chair while rearranging things, so when she went to sit back down, she went all the way down to the floor! It was very exciting, and fortunately she wasn't hurt.

After church,  they had ice cream in the parking lot. I asked if New Zealand was really this perfect, but they said that this was a rare thing, and that we were just lucky.



Someone who worked at the bakery also had a couple bins of bread and "buns" (rolls) to hand out for free to anyone who wanted some.

Between the bread and the ice cream, lunch was taken care of!

Here is my kiwi imitation.

We all made friends with people there, and felt right at home.

The bishop's wife was very nice.

At one point, she asked her cute 14-year-old daughter to put the extra bread in the bishop's office. Being 14, the gal acted slightly put off at the request, but she and her friend took the bins inside.

Meanwhile, a handicapped lady, who had been struggling to get around on two crutches, apparently asked if she could have some bread. So when the daughter returned, the bishop's wife told her, "Oh, [sister so-and-so] would like some bread. Could you get her some buns?"

The daughter (jokingly) acted indignant and said, "Well! If she wants some buns, she can just WWWALK right over there and get some!" Then she went and got some. (The sister was out of ear shot). I thought, "Wow! Sassy!" (Or "cheeky", as they'd call it there).

Later we walked around the Rainbow Springs nature reserve, where we had seen Kiwis the night before, since our pass was good through the next day.

At one point, we waited at an owl cage to hear a presentation there. But nobody arrived to give the presentation, so Rob decided to stand up and give it himself (using information he read off of the sign to his right), which was awesome.

Here is just a tiny clip of his "presentation".

There happened to be one ride at the place, which was a log ride, so we gave it a go.

It was pleasant and cute, and taught a bit about the history and ecology of the area. (Including a surprising bit that began, "Hi! My name is Jake! I'm a trout!")

After we went down, Linette yelled, "Again! Again!" Since there was no "queue" (line), the worker let us go again. And then a third time. (We asked what the record was, and he said, "33". We weren't going to beat that.)

We saw various birds, reptiles, fish and other animals there. Here is a (dead, stuffed) kiwi. It's a really interesting animal, with furry feathers, wings that are practically non-existent, and a really long bill. In spite of that, though, it technically has the "shortest beak of any bird", because beaks are normally measured from the nose holes to the tip, and kiwis have the nose holes right by the tip (so they can smell the bugs in the dark).

When kiwis lay eggs, the eggs are huge inside of them, leading to speculation that they used to be larger birds.

A gal was walking by and said that she was going to go in and put the kiwis to bed, and did we want to come? So we got a private encounter with their "daytime" kiwis. Kiwis are nocturnal, so to trick these ones, they have a really dark room so that they'll be awake during the day; and then they turn on the lights to put them to bed.

Here are a couple of unauthorized pictures of the live kiwis.

It was funny that when the gal flipped on the lights, each of the kiwis wandered over to their shelter and went to bed. The gal also went in and restocked their feeding tube with bugs and stuff.

Apparently kiwis are a bit endangered from predators like cats, dogs, pigs and ferrets (none of which are native to the island).

After leaving Rainbow Springs, we visited a public park in Rotorua that has a thermal lake. At first, we just saw a bubbling mud puddle, and weren't too impressed. Then we went a little further and came upon this huge, steaming lake.

It was really hot and steamy in there, like a sauna.

In this video segment, you can get a sense for the bubbling, steaming lake.

I love this picture of the boardwalk disappearing into the steam.



That night we barbecued up the Thai chicken satay we had gotten at the store earlier that week.

Melissa was surprisingly excited about this particular head of lettuce.

The night before, Linette had commented that she felt something "sharp" under her pillow. There was an electric blanket on the bed, so I wondered if it might be a wire to that. But she didn't think much of it and went to sleep.

Then on this night, she felt it again. She started feeling around, and said, "It feels like a fish hook or something...." Then she SCREAMED and yelled, "It bit me!!"

We both freaked out and jumped out of bed, flipped on the lights, pulled up her pillow, and there was an enormous bug under her pillow!!

It climbed behind the bed, so I tried to smash the mattress against it, and it came back up and out by my pillow. So I ran upstairs and got a glass, and then psyched myself up to catch it, because if I missed, and it escaped behind the bed, we might just have to go sleep somewhere else.

I caught it, and here it is inside a glass. It turned out to be a weta, which is like a huge (3-4 inch) grasshopper that is native to New Zealand. ("Weta", as in "Weta heck is that doing under my pillow!??"). New Zealand has no native poisonous snakes or spiders, fortunately, but this thing still has some serious pincers in back, as Linette can attest.

I left the weta under the glass on the kitchen counter all night. But I left a message in Bananagrams letters on top of the glass so nobody would get a surprise and break a glass or something.

I thought maybe it would suffocate under the glass all night, but it was fine. Apparently it can survive under a glass all night. Or a pillow. In fact, one of the scariest parts of this whole exciting experience is the thought that it was under Linette's pillow all night long the previous night!

We let it go in the morning. Here you can see its really long antennae, and the spiny hind legs that Linette thought felt like a fish hook.

When I told the owners of the rental house about the huge weta we had found under Linette's pillow, they replied, "Well, that was cheeky of it!" So that was an exciting end to the day.

In the next and final episode, we finally take some time to kayak at our lake, visit a nearby waterfall, and narrowly dodge Cyclone Gita for the third and final time.

New Zealand 6: Hiking and Hakas

On Saturday, February 17, 2018, we awoke to another beautiful day.

We had a lovely breakfast out on the deck.

We didn't have anything in particular we had to do that day, having crammed our main activities into the first few days, so after considering our options, we decided to go back to the beach, since our visit there after the dolphin trip had been cut short.

Along the way, we saw kiwi fruit growing in vineyards along the road. Apparently kiwi (the fruit) originated in China, and was called "Chinese Gooseberry" for some time, but was named "kiwifruit" by marketers when it was exported from New Zealand, and the name has spread. (Kiwi is of course the name of the national bird of New Zealand--more on that later--as well as the nickname for people from New Zealand).

Kiwi vineyard

We thought it would be fun to have boogie boards for the beach, so we stopped by a K-Mart in New Zealand. While there, I saw these funny "business socks".

Rob and Melissa were really excited about the underpants they got as a gag gift for all of their children. (When their kids opened the underwear later, one looked confused; one laughed; the youngest said, "Where's our real present?"; and the youngest boy donned his underpants and thrust out his chest as he displayed them with pride.)

They didn't have boogie boards at K-Mart, but I wondered if these foam floor things would work. (Only sort of, it turned out). I also bought a small pump to inflate our inflatable boogie board, since our electric pump only ran on 120V, and New Zealand uses 220.

When we got to the shore of the Bay of Plenty, we once again started climbing Mt. Maunganui (aka Mt. Mauao).

This, time, though, we hiked all the way to the top. Except for Rob, who ran all the way to the top, more than once.

From up above, we could see that a couple of cruise ships were in port.

It was a warm day, but we knew we would be jumping in the ocean when we were done with the hike.

From above, we could see both sides of the peninsula that the mountain was on, and we could see that the sandy beaches went on for miles.

Along the way, we talked with a young gal from Chile. I told her that Jon had lived in Chile, so he talked with her for a while as we neared the top, so that was cool.

Mercifully, there was a shady bench at the top.

I loved the scenery along the way.

The other side of the mountain had steep, rocky cliffs.

And the sheep grazed near the base of the mountain.

As we neared the bottom, we saw that there was a wedding taking place on the beach.

There were some kids doing a Maori performance for the middle-aged couple that were getting married.

When the kids came out, we told them that they did a great job.

Without any prompting, they said, "Oh, did you want a picture?" and then posed for us.

At a signal from the lady, they went into menacing Maori mode, grimacing and sticking out tongues.

The lady showed us how the skirts were made of flax reeds.

The kids had traditional Maori tattoos drawn onto their faces (for the boys) and chins (for the girls).

Linette had ice cream for lunch. I didn't think that sounded healthy, so I had pizza and ice cream. :)

New Zealand did seem to live up to its claim of having great ice cream.

Down by the beach, a Volkswagon Bus convention was going on, with dozens of them driving by, all in a row.

There were also some hang gliders flying around. (Apparently one of them died that day, which is sad.)

The inflatable boogie board worked pretty well.

The foam floor tiles, not quite as well, but better than nothing.

Shauna had some ice cream that she shared afterwards. Rob was driving, so here I am feeding him as we go.

That evening, after we had all had a chance to shower and take a little break, we went to a Maori cultural performance and dinner at the Mitai Maori Village.

Here is a traditional war canoe.

The dinner was covered and cooked using heat from natural thermal vents.

And here is the food after the grand unveiling.

The big buffet dinner was great, and we had fun talking to an older couple at our table, along with a cute young gal from Europe (Switzerland, I believe), who was in New Zealand with her boyfriend (who had decided not to accompany her to this event). We all gave her dating advice. :)

We went on a little hike through the forest before dinner, and they had us all do a little Maori yell.

There was a natural spring there bubbling up cold water. The bubbling silt looked like a lava flow.

Here's a short video showing it bubbling up.

And some dudes floated by in a Maori war canoe.

The cultural show was nice. Here's a Maori Poi Ball performance.

And here's a dance I like to call "Clickity-Stickit."

And finally, the intimidating Maori Haka!

After the show, we went for a walk in the dark to see the glow worms. It was kind of cool to see them. In case you don't want to just imagine glowing dots, here's a lame picture of two of them.

That night they also took us to see Kiwi birds, which was kind of a cool experience. They're nocturnal, so it was dark when we went in to see them; and we had to be quiet and not take any pictures, since a flash or light might throw off their schedule and stress them out. So we all had to tiptoe through and find them in the near-darkness, which made it kind of eerie.

The Kiwi is the national bird of New Zealand, is native to the island, and is the nickname for people from New Zealand. I heard people on the news refer to themselves as "Kiwis" multiple times.

In the next episode, we get another look at Kiwis (the bird), and I'll share some pictures of this funky bird. We also associate with some Kiwis (the people) at church, and visit a thermal lake.