Hokey hangi

I don't really know if it was hokey or not, but the setting certainly was. Our hotel in Rotorua, the least attractive one we encountered on our trip, was a tour bus factory, where big buses disgorged and then loaded up dozens of tourists. Some were students but most were Brits of a certain age. The hotel offered a Maori hangi that evening, which we had to book within 45 minutes to get a good price. Silly, but we bit anyway.

Before dinner, we walked around. Our hotel was on the sulfurous (read, stinky) lake and right next to the Polynesian Spa, which has been in existence in one form or another since the late nineteenth century. We grabbed our suits and booked a dip. The pools were deliciously hot, and people moved from pool to pool, gently soaking and looking at the gray sky. It was very relaxing.

On to dinner! We were greeted in the lobby, where the crowd was enjoying half-priced happy hour, by a European-looking man who greeted us in Maori and proceeded by both celebrating and mocking Maori traditions to work the crowd into a good mood. We surged into the dining room for a buffet dinner that featured pork, chicken and lamb, all cooked on hot rocks in the old way. Not bad, though EAP was a bit taken aback by the greed shown by some of the guests who had to elbow her out of the way so they could get their second helpings.

After dinner came the Maori dancing. Here was our leader.

 

The group danced the haka together.

 

This man was small but had great stage presence - you couldn't take your eyes off him.

 

Here he is dancing.



The women did the poi dance, with musical and vocal support from the men.


Some of the dancing included the famous tongue-sticking-out gesture meant to scare off warriors.


I wish I knew how authentic it was - probably a fairly true representation of the culture, but in a terrible setting. On the whole, something we could see and then cross off our lists forever...

Camera woes

Although I had brought a cheap waterproof camera, I took my real camera on the kayak trip anyway. Because I am an idiot, apparently. When it slipped out of my jacket and into the water I picked it up right away, but the damage was done. Here's a sad little picture that actually depicts pretty well what the drenching rain in Okarito looked like.

 

This impressionistic view of our bedroom has a certain charm, but it went downhill from here.

 

Tim advised me that the camera was dying a slow death, and I had to agree. What to do now?

After the ritual lamentations and recriminations (all conducted internally), I pulled out my phone and began taking some not-bad pictures with it. Transferring them to the computer seems beyond my abilities right now, but some day I'll show them to you...

This afternoon we had half an hour in Wanaka before lunch in Arrowtown, so I ducked into the first camera store we saw and bought a camera right on the spot. Without doing any research or consulting David Pogue first! I can only hope I made the right decision, but so far so good.

Here's an okay picture of a gull on Queenstown Harbour. Let's hope it gets better from here.

 

Oddities

Someone - maybe Barbara Damrosch? - recommended cocoa hull mulch, so when I saw some at Roxbury Mills I grabbed a bag. I've used it just on containers, and I like the look, although chocolate is a strange smell in the garden. Yesterday I noticed white mold on the mulch!  Yuck - but it's apparently common in wet, humid weather (which we've had for weeks) and totally harmless.

Weirder than that is what happens to Soil Moist granules when you spill them on the ground. As soon as it rains, they swell up and look like transparent jello.
 

Video experiment

I've added a link to garden videos, though I'm not sure I like it. You input search terms and then get whatever comes back. Mildly interesting.... if you want to take a look, scroll down to the bottom of the page, click on the video that interests you, and then scroll back to the top to watch it. A little clunky, maybe I'll figure out a better way to do it. Here's a link to a pleasant gardener talking about her garden. And here's a more professional video about hydrangeas.