Got up and packed the bags once again. Just about had time for a cup of tea before having to check out. The guy at reception gave us a local map and suggested a bush walk we could do nearby to where we had been caving yesterday, so we jumped in the car and took the short drive to the caves.
The walk itself was quite interesting and not too tough. It was an extension of the cave system we had been leaping about in yesterday, but over the course of time, the caves had collapsed in on themselves, leaving a kind of deep gorge beneath it, with fast flowing rivers, waterfalls and lots of vegetation. In fact, if you took the plant life away, added a roof and made it dark again, I am sure it would be easy to see how similar it was to the black water caves. This walk involved no wading through water though, as it has been developed as a nice easy walk so you get to climb down wooden steps and walk along a boardwalk for much of it. At a couple of points we had to walk through low, narrow tunnels, cut out of the rocks over many eons by trickling water. Eventually we came to a large cave (still with a roof, but no glow worms!) where we saw lots and lots of unusual rock formations, stalactites and stalagmites.
We kept on seeing lots of really cute birds, I think it was called a ‘fantail’, and we tried for ages to get a photo but they just wouldn’t sit still longer than a millisecond – they moved so fast but teased us by hanging around really close, just impossible to capture!
After our walk we went to a cafe in Waitomo and had a spot of lunch before heading to our next visit to ‘Billy Black’s Kiwi Culture Show’ just around the corner at Woodlyn Park. When we arrived, we were more than amused to find that Woodlyn Park was typical of random Kiwi-ness and in fact was a hotel, of sorts. At the reception, we were shown into the main hall to wait for the show to begin and it was full of lots of odd memorabilia, photographs and farming ephemera, all over the place. Amongst these were displays about the hotel and we discovered that it was not a normal sort of hotel - they do not have rooms, instead they have units and each is incredibly odd and quirky – a train carriage, a boat, a plane and two ‘hobbit holes’. There was a display about each one – the plane was a 1950s Bristol Freighter and was one of the last allied planes out of Vietnam, the boat was a WW2 patrol boat built in 1942 in Auckland, the train was a 1950s rail car and they have created two ‘hobbit holes’! They had photographs of how they had transformed each of them from what they once were.
When the show began, there were only 7 of us in the audience, so it was clear from the start that there would be no way of getting out of any audience participation bits! The guy on the stage introduced himself as Ben Black, and it was clear he was very Kiwi indeed, had a very Kiwi sense of humour and was a true farmer at heart, albeit with a bit of a flare for performing on stage (a fair dinkum Kiwi as the Aussies would say!)! He explained and showed us things about the ways of farming in the pioneering days, from how they would climb trees to fell them, to some of the tools they would use. He then dragged Mike and an American guy up on stage to get them to use an old-style two-handed saw, to cut up a log. Next up was me and I had to help blow up tree trunk, although thankfully it was not a real explosion – just a demonstration of how it would be done (the ‘gunpowder’ I was lighting was really just black sand!).
Next Ben showed us some of the animals from the farm (I think this was the most astonishing part to the three Japanese tourists in the audience!). First of all he brought out a ‘kiwi bear’ – another name for a possum, which was called Helen. Then he brought out a really massive black pig with massive teeth, he got it to do tricks on stage, including the moonwalk! It looked like the sort of pig that might have roamed wild a long time ago and certainly one that you wouldn’t want to meet whilst wandering the woods in the dark! Next up, we met the sheep dog who herded in a group of sheep from outside, into the building and up onto the stage by means of whistle commands from Ben (the Japanese thought this was amazing!). Ben then caught one of the sheep and put it in a pen, before getting the dog to herd the rest of the sheep and the rather feisty ram (which kept trying to butt Ben with its rather long, sharp horns) back outside.
We were then shown the hand held sheep shearers that farmers used to use (and some apparently still do) which just look like large scissor blades. Ben brought out the shears that he would be using – they looked like modern clippers, only they were not electric, but instead were connected up to a contraption which had a handle that someone else had to turn, in order to make the blades move. Once he had demonstrated how they functioned, he brought out the sheep and sheared it on the stage, with various people cranking the handle. Within just a couple of minutes the sheep went from being rather fat and fluffy to being very skinny and bald!
The last animal he brought out was Big Mac, the really large steer. The biggest cow I have ever seen. It was quite funny as it looked just like the cow and calf we had seen yesterday, but only was about five times the size of them!
After the show, we stayed and chatted to Ben. He told us a bit more about the plane and the train and their plans to develop the hotel further with more hobbit holes. Apparently Waitomo has now been officially earmarked for some filming of ‘The Hobbit’ so the town is looking forward to a bit of a boost. Then we went for a wander around Woodlyn Park and took a closer look at the different units, they looked really cool.
We then had a quick drink at the pub before making tracks to Rotorua; a drive that took about three hours. On arriving in Rotorua, we were trying to find the hostel using a map for a different hostel and then got really confused when it wasn’t there when we pulled up. It was then that I realised my marvellous navigation had gone a bit wrong – rather than just using the map of the second hostel to find the road that our hostel was on, I had actually directed us to the X on the map for that hostel; made me laugh anyway, so then I had to redirect us to the hostel we were actually looking for.
We got out the car and were greeted by the beautiful Rotorua stench – really, I don’t know how people could ever get used to the smell enough to ignore it and live here! We checked into the hostel, found the tv room and relaxed with a couple of beers and a movie (they have Sky Movies here – wow!).
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