This postcard doesn't do justice to the area it depicts. Behind Cathedral Rocks you can barely see a small lake. Looking down at the lake from above you see the whole bloody thing steaming. I hope my photos will do it a bit more justice. The Waimango Thermal area is much more interesting than the Whaka-whaka-whaka area I saw a few postcards ago. Nevertheless, as Tony Wheeler says in the Guidebook, "the mud bubbles, the water boils, the geysers spout." He forgot to mention that the sulfur smells. Although we didn't pay the extra money to take a boat across the lake to see the remains of the white and pink terraces, which were destroyed in the eruption of 1886, the trip was well worthwhile. The Rotorua museum has some old photographs of these terraces, steplike limestone (sulfur?) formations, and they were, indeed, spectacular! See my photo of a smaller terrace taken in this park.

HANGI
I was hoping to get the obligatory postcard of the maori sticking his tongue out, but since I'm no longer in Rotorua, I might as well describe it here. Wes and I went to a "traditional Maori Hangi" which is literally an oven built within a fire, but which is used, in tourist terminology, to refer to the feast and dance ceremony that accompanies it. We went to one at the International Hotel. Unusual foods eaten include wild boar, venison, eel, muttonbird, and Kumara. It was all very good, but I ate far more than I should have (and it was more expensive than the Rice Tafel in Aukland). The dance was essentially chanting accompanied by arm and hand movements. Half a dozen men and as many women (men in back and women in front) performed accompanied by a single guitar. The performance was quite pleasant, unlike most productions of this sort. Most of the women's dances included a rope with leather balls on each end. The motion emulated a bird in flight, and the slapping of the balls to redirect them provided percussion for the pieces. A very gentle people.