Te Puiu is the Maori experience every tourist experiences. It is home to the NZ Maori Arts and Crafts Institute and the Whakarewarewa Geothermal Valley. We took a free tour which took us through the geothermal area with its gushing geysers. It gave us a history of the Maori culture and taught of its art form. We then watched a Maori concert which was very good including the Maori war dance where the warrior sticks out his tongue and shows the whites of his eyes making himself as ugly as possible, thus to scare his enemy. It was very cool. We even got to see 2 kiwis which where in an enclosed habitat. The kiwi is an endangered animal and it is very rare to see them in the wild.
After our Maori experience we left Rotarua and drove up the coast toward the Coramandel Peninsula. As much as I love geothermal activity, I felt as though there was too much fire energy there for me. I was having a hard time breathing, feeling like I wasn't getting enough oxygen in my lungs and I was constantly yawning without completing the peak of the yawn. I was also getting headaches, a heat rash and feeling very emotional. It could have been the sulfur in the air (Rotarua is one giant sulfur pit), or maybe it was the energy. Who knows? What I do know is as soon as we reached the ocean at Waihi my lungs started to clear as soon as I stepped on the beach. My headache went away and I felt instantly better in my mind and emotions.
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