December 7, 2022

December 7, 2022

From our motel on the northern outskirts of Rotorua, we drove just a few miles to the Agrodome, a farm theme park. Having grown up with farming relatives, I have little interest. Aimee, however is a city girl and wants to learn about this part of New Zealand culture. After all there are far far more sheep and cows than people in this mostly rural country. Our visit commences with a show of all the different breeds of sheep. Who knew (or cared) that there were so many. I learned that each breed has different wool qualities and production rates that are important for the various sheep markets, i.e. carpet wool vs clothing vs lamb chops. The show then moves on to sheep shearing, lamb feeding, and cow milking. In some ways the commentator made it an entertaining comedy show. It ended with a sheep dog herding….three ducks!

The show moved outdoors for a too short of a display on dogs herding sheep around. Being dog lovers we would have liked this part to go on far longer.

The final part of the experience was a tractor tour of the farm, which was mostly an excuse to feed sheep and alpacas. Aimee enjoyed this part. Afterwards we returned to our motel for hot chocolate.

In the afternoon we went into Rotorua, stopping first at Kuirau Park. Geothermal activity dots this area and this city park has lots of low-level steam vents. There is even a hot pool for visitors to soak weary feet. Rotorua has the reputation as the smelliest city in New Zealand.

We then drove to the adjacent Uhinemutu neighborhood, which is a living Maori village. The streets are very narrow and humorously many homes have a bubbling steam vent in their yard. We stop at St. Faith's Anglican Church. This historic and colorful church sits between the tribe's Meeting House and the lakefront Soldier's Cemetery. If the church was open we could have seen the window that has an etching of Christ in Maori garb who appears to be walking on the background lake water. Humorously we ran into another Tucsonan tourist wearing a U of A ballcap.

We then drove the couple miles to the south side of Rotorua to visit Whakarewarewa Forest Park. This recreational park started life as a research area assessing the viability of growing exotic trees for commercial production. Interestingly Redwood trees thrive here and grow faster than in their native California home. Our GPS had trouble finding this Redwood grove so we ended up walking within the Scion Tree Research area which had several groves of experimental trees. 

After exploring the area we drove around the corner to find the Redwood Memorial Grove. We were amazed at how big a Redwood Forest this park has. Unsurprisingly the always enterprising Kiwis are profiting at this park by offering a Treetop Redwood Walk.

We returned to our motel and decided to stay local for dinner. Hidden in the back bowels of our motel is a fancy restaurant. Aimee and I felt underdressed being there. I had a Coconut Curry Laksa Soup which was delicious. I now need to go to Singapore and Malaysia to check out this spicy cuisine.