Rotorua to Tauranga area

Day 34-March 11^th

The next morning at 9:30 we went to the Sheep Show at the Agrodome. The brought on a bunch of different kinds of sheep, showed how one was sheared, and brought on a bunch of other animals. It was very funny. At one point, Sheeshao got to go up on stage and milk a cow.

Right afterwards we went to the OGO ball office. The OGO is a giant, clear plastic, inflated ball with a cavity in the middle. You crawl into the center with a bit of water and roll 250 meters down a hill. You slide in the water while the ball rolls underneath you. Another company does the same thing, called the Zorb. My mom and I went together then my dad and sister went. It was fun, but it would have been more fun if we could have done it a couple of times. When my dad and sister went, one of the staff laid down in the path to be run over by the ball. It was so bouncy that it didn’t hurt  him.

We then drove to Mount Maunganui. This was a little town on the beach, but was obviously a very popular spot. There must have been five high rise luxury apartments just 10 meters from the beach. At the time there was a Surf Life Saving championship competition. There were hundreds of people, fifty tents all over the beach, surfers everywhere, and barely any space on the beach. We walked along a little ways to some other beaches. One of the ones we stopped at was covered with shells so that you couldn’t even see the beach. We then drove to a little town near Tauranga.

  

My parents had a friend, Donna, who they knew from Alaska. She was an engineer who had worked with them at a mine, and they had kept in contact with her. She now lived with her husband, Andrew, and her daughter Morgan, in a little town called Omokoroa Beach. Her other daughter, Mackenzie, who I had met the last two times we were here (although I don’t remember much) was living in New England trying to get into the New York Film Academy. Later that night we went to a wonderful percussion performance at an orchard near them by a band called Strike. It was good, although a bit loud. They also had been working with a bunch of kids for a few weeks in workshop. They had these kids perform at the concert as well.