Now I can say I've been to New Zealand

As I left off in my last post, oh so long ago, Courtney and I went to Rotorua on my last weekend in New Zealand. Apparently, Rotorua is the tourist city on the north island. The entire place smells like sulfur, and it's famous for it's hot springs, which are basically just pools of water that smell bad and steam all the time, but they were still pretty great to see.

Sheep!

But enough of the hot springs, I want to talk about sheep. They're everywhere! I can't believe I went over two weeks in New Zealand without ever seeing one. What are the odds? I think the sheep to people ratio is like 10:1, but obviously Auckland isn't the sheep capital of the country. The four hour bus ride from Auckland to Rotorua was enough to prove to me that sheep really have taken over the country. And, once we were there, we went to see the Agrodome, which is the main tourist attraction in Rotorua. They do free shows and stuff, so if you go you can learn a lot about sheep, maybe even too much. If you're not interested, I understand. Feel free to skim this next little bit.

We saw a dog herd three lambs (so cute, but obviously terrified) through an obstacle course and then into this tiny pen at the end. It was amazing how well trained and responsive the dog was to the guy who was calling out orders. I'm sure that guy has an official name but we came a little late so I missed the introduction. Anyway, when he had finally finished the obstacle course he called out, "Good boy. Go get yourself a drink." So the dog ran over to his water bowl, got a drink and then trotted happily out of the arena. I think that Rocky and Fergis (Fergus? Sorry, I'm not sure) could both be pretty good at sheep herding. Yeah right.

We also learned all about how they shear sheep, and saw a sheep shearing museum, which was basically a shrine to this one guy who was the best sheep shearer of his day. He won all of the sheep shearing competitions and exposed the world to the art of sheep shearing. That's right, I said sheep shearing competitions. They still exist. I forget the exact numbers but I'm pretty sure the best of the best can sheer an entire adult sheep in about a minute. Which I think is impressive.

If that's not enough for you, we also saw how they card the wool in this HUGE machine that they have been using since 1903 or something like that. It basically gets rolled though these big rollers a bunch of times until it's all going in the same direction, and then you can feed it through this cute little contraption at the end and turn it into yarn yourself. Well, I couldn't, but the woman showing us around could. But after a while there's only so much you can learn about sheep, so eventually Courtney and I wandered off to other attractions.

Like zorbing!

If I'm honest this is pretty much the whole reason I wanted to come to Rotorua. Here's how it works: they take a big rubbery plastic ball and but it inside an even bigger rubbery plastic ball so that it's all cushiony in the small one. Then they throw some (mercifully warm) water into the small ball. Then Courtney and I get inside with with the water, and we rock forward until the whole contraption rolls down a hill. There's a lot of laughing and yelling and everyone gets very wet. It's always written up with the adventure sports, but it's not really that adventurous, just kind of ridiculous.

Kiwis!

And speaking of ridiculous, I also got to see the famous kiwis. Having met the people and eaten the fruit, this was the third point of the kiwi triangle for me. I don't know the actual reason that the fruit and the bird have the same name, but I have a hypothesis: they look exactly alike! If you slap a long bill and feet onto the fruit and tell it to make funny noises and jump around like a little kid that excited about something, you get the bird. They are basically just brown fur balls, but they're pretty cute.

Courtney and I toured a hatchery for an hour, while we were told about the rise and fall of the kiwi birds and what they are doing to help. This is another information overload so you can skim this part too if you want. It turns out that there are not native predators in New Zealand, which is why these silly little birds were able to flourish. But when other animals were introduced their numbers declined. Now the hatchery collects eggs and protects the chicks until they are about 1 kg, which is a weight at which they will be more likely to survive since in the wild most of them die when they're young. At this point they release the birds into the wild. There weren't any chicks there when we were there because the season is over, but all of the pictures were really cute. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the ones they have in captivity since they are nocturnal and the flash scares them, so I don't have any of my own, but I still got to see them which is enough for me.

After this busy day, Courtney and I baked cake because our hostel had an oven, which most don't, and made everybody jealous with smell. Then the next morning we went our separate ways. I was sad to lose my travel buddy, but she was going to Wellington for her project (and to sky dive!) and I was going back to Auckland to get organized for a couple of days before I went to Australia.