Kia Ora - Good Health!

Written: September 6th, 2007

Time: It is an ever present variable of our lives. Sometimes it feels like it's going by too fast; like the 3 hour moped ride on Hvar that felt like 3 minutes. Sometimes it feels like it's going excruciatingly slow; like the 14 hour overnight Turkish buses or the Dar Express with the Nigerian movie being played or flights with crying babies. However unless you have a vehicle that can take you to speeds even remotely close to the speed of light, time is constant, always ticking by. The grains of sand continually and constantly flow down in the mystery-sized hourglass of the Universe.

I am running out of time.

I am running out of time since my trip will end in 2 weeks. I will be starting work in less than 19 days and although I miss family, friends and stability, I fear being chained down by career and responsibilities like so many people.
I am running out of time in New Zealand and instead of staying an extra day in Rotorua, I've decided to rush to Auckland to rent a car and go up to Cape Reinga and 90 Mile beach. I am regretting the decision since I have left behind Marco and Yvo, 2 pretty cool guys also with Magic bus, and also a group of 3 girls form the UK that were pretty sweet, nice to talk to and just plain attractive.

Yvo and I along with the 3 girls went to the Tamanaki Maori village to see the concert and hangi feast. I was very impressed by how well it was put together. It wasn't tacky and it was extremely education and entertaining. The audio/visual was great. Yvo volunteered to be our Waka's (canoe/bus) chief since visiting tribes needed a chief and he had some responsibilities. He was one of 4 chiefs present when a group of warriors came out to do intimidation dances and the peace offering. We then walked about a replica village seeing some of the traditional activities. We then attended the concert which had great music and was full of energy. They sang a few traditional songs, a love medley and did the almighty Haka (I've got it on video) which was quite a sigh live and in close encounter. We then had the hangi which was a buffet of food cooked in the earth. There was regular/sweet potatoes, carrots, fried bread, pasta salad, egg salad, mussles, fish, chicken, lamb, stuffing and gravy. This was a feast compared to what us backpackers usually get.
I ate a lot but the girls ate so much they were out of commission and couldn't ome out for drinks later. It was at dinner that I sat beside one of the girls and we struck up some interesting conversations. I was feeling good since I had a haircut, a shower, a shave and really cleaned up from the bum that I kind of looked like before. At one point after getting some tea back to the table, the girl whispered to me, "Your dessert almost got taken away."
Me: Well, thank you very much for rescuing it for me.
Her: Rescued it from myself!
Me: Well you know there there's more where it came from.
She looked at me, smiled and said, "Don't tempt me."

On the way back, some national anthems were sung and we could smell getting back into town.

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Later on, Marco, Yvo and I decided to go out for drinks but other than a half empty bar reeking of fresh paint and a Belgian pub with 3 cougars looking at us from the window, we didn't find much. So we finished a bottle of wine and watched half of Black Hawk Down before hitting the sack.

Time's up in Rotorua.