Day 3 in NZ "Rotorua"

We crashed into bed early and awoke around 7 am to head out to the Fat Dog Café for a full breakfast. Mary had the bananas and French toast smothered in maple syrup, my breakfast was eggs benedict with smoked NZ salmon. OUTSTANDING flavor. We met a young fellow from Hampshire in England over breakfast and he asked us where were from and we said Canada. His instant retort was “Oh intelligent Americans” I thought we would split a gut laughing. After breakfast we polished off another terrific flat white coffee and headed out to Wai-o-tapu, which is a volcanic park. We toured around for about a hour viewing some spectacular thermal pools and at geyser that erupts daily at 10:15 am.. From Wai-o-tapu we headed for Hells Gate that is another thermal area and had a quick lunch in the car of cheese and crackers washed down with a nice NZ Sauvignon Blanc. We toured around Hells Gate which was disappointing versus Wai-o-tapu and then hotfooted over to the Agridome to watch the sheep shearing demonstration. They also had a very cool sheepdog demonstration a as well as an old wool-carding machine that has been operating for over 100 years. For dinner we attended the Tamaki Maori Cultural Experience. This was a very moving evening of traditional Maori cultural explanations as well as a tour of a pre European village as well as being serenading with traditional music and song. We headed back to our hotel and tumbled into bed around 11.