Saturday, December 13, 2003

Sheep (1 of ?)

Which brings us to today (er, forgot the bit about the Polynesian Spa last night -- after rafting, soaked in some nice mineral pools and got a weird massage done under water jets--felt good) -- anyway, today is basically my last day in New Zealand (waaa!) and there's only one thing left on the list -- bouncing down a hill in a big plastic ball -- aka zorbing.

The zorb establishment is on the premises of the Agrodome, a place that has a sheep show ("as close as you can get to a real Kiwi farm without stepping in something!") and other adventurey stuff (a bungy, a jetboat, etc.)  I took a shuttle over to the Agrodome, and ... figuring I had nothing much else to do, went to a pre-zorb sheep show.

A word about Rotorua -- I'm told it is something like the second most popular tourist destination in New Zealand (#1 being the Waitomo Caves) and you'd NEVER think it from being here.  The town is dead.  DEAD.  I walk the streets and there's nobody here.  I can't believe any of the shops get enough custom to stay open.  It's like a ghost town, there are so few people.  There have only been three places I've seen significant tourism:  the Tamaki village, the Polynesian Spa, and the sheep show.  (Do they have sheep in China?  There was a HUGE Chinese group at the sheep show, and they were all standing next to the sheep and taking pictures with sheep as though a sheep was something unusual.)

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Probably citified Chinese folk. Then again, they are Chinese. They will take a thousand pictures of other Chinese people if need be.