Last day at the Beach House

Unfortunately, the night before our last day at the beach house, Maia fussed all night long, and I woke up at 5 in the morning and didn't fall asleep again until 7. When I finally got up, everybody was already at the beach, so it was quiet in the house. I was very happy when I found that Uncle Phil let us use his computer. Among other things, I found that an ebay customer was unhappy, and had to deal with that.
After lunch, Uncle Phil, Aunt Christine and the family packed up and left. It was nice to see them, but it was also kind of nice to have the house to ourselves again. We read some more of that Percy Jackson book, and when the tide was out, we went down to the beach for the last time. I practiced tricks and even did a jump once. At the end I rode a wave even better than the first one. I could write a whole post on that ride. But I won't. It was too awesome.
One thing I can't stand about New Zealand is all the bugs. They're everywhere! I killed 82 flies in 4 days at this house, and the crickets are 2 inches long, fat and black.
Also, it appears that allergies I never knew I had, a bad cold and horrible asthma are teaming up to kill me. I guess there's a price to pay for being in an awesome place...
Speaking of colds and flies, we have funny names for things - catching a cold and killing flies.... how come you never hear of somebody getting a bad case of the warm or having to kill those pesky swims?
The next day we packed and cleaned the house and left by lunch time. It was sad to say goodbye to the place. On the way we passed through a town called Te Puke (pronounced "tay poo kee"), and it was very entertaining looking at the town signs.

We drove and didn't get to Rotorua until nearly dinner time. While driving, however, we knew we were getting close to the town because we started to smell a horrible stench. The smell comes from the sulfur gas coming out of the ground in the hotpools and mudpots. We got to the hotel but had to almost immediately leave to the Maori Dinner and Show Cultural Experience. It sounds funny, but it was actually very cool and interesting. First, we got to see a hangi, which is a large dinner of lamb, chicken, potatoes and kumara (sweet potato) cooked in an underground oven. That was our dinner, and it was cooking while we watched. Next we went to the spring nearby, which was incredibly clear. Then a group of Maori warriors rowed up a river in a war canoe.

We followed them to the show, which was pretty cool. A Maori Chief basically described a whole ton of things about the Maori culture and things the Maoris do. It was also nice because they didn't take themselves way too seriously like some of the Indian tribes in America do. The warriors performed a whole ton of traditional things (not quite sure what the word is for that).


The last one there is the warriors doing the Ha Ka, a war dance meant both to intimidate enemies and welcome visitors (I apologize again for the poor quality).


Next we had our dinner, which was very good. We had water during the dinner, but I didn't know until afterward that the water was collected from the source of the spring, the same one we walked along earlier, with nothing added or changed. After dinner, we went on a bush walk in the dark through the bush, looking at native plants and the glow worms on them, which was very cool.
We got back very late, and found that our hotel had free internet. I realized that I might be able to find Lost on youtube, and I was happy when we were able to watch one of the episodes we missed. Unfortunately, though, that meant that I didn't get to sleep until nearly 3 am L.A. time.