David and Elana's Pictures

Top > Our Vacations > 2004-10 New Zealand Honeymoon > 01.Rotorua > 01.Whaka Village

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The ancestral house in the village of Whaka. (That is the short name. The long name is VERY long). Whaka is a real Maori village which still houses 29 families.

The symbols on the Maori ancestral houses often evoke scary faces to protect the house and the village from enemies. This kind of bulging eyes and tongue out is also seen in some of their pre-war dancing.

Another warrior face on the side of the ancestral house. They did tell us that there was significance to the tongue hanging out to different sides and what it meant (we don't remember the significance, unfortunately).

This is what Whaka Village looks like. It lives among steam vents, which are utilized for cooking, bathing and recreation. This is a photo of their main cooking pool.

Different minerals bring out different colors in the water. Many pools in the area are not utilized for energy. This is one of them.

This is the cooking pool. People frequently put corn or chicken into a secured net and throw it into the pool to cook, pull it out twenty minutes later or less and must eat it immediately at the benches near the cooking pool or it will cool down. The Maori in Whaka do not use their stoves, though they own them.

Their local geyser. They use to have many more but the city of Rotorua started using the hot water for natural hot spring pools for their hotel guests and killed most of the geysers off. Now there is one main one left and Rotorua has been prohibited from that practice.

The geyser from a different angle with the recreation pool beside it. This is where the teenage Maori hang out after dinner.

The geyser, billowing up into the sky.

Elana and David posing in front of the geyser.