quest's end... (museum quest CONCLUSION!)

Location: Auckland

Baskets Left: 1
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i'd failed my mission to dispose of the three kete o te wananga (the tombs of all maori mystic knowledge) baskets... though i'd managed to alert ms. rhonwyn of the situation i didn't think there was much hope of her salvaging my bungle up...

_
whiro, maori god of suffering and darkness, had caught up with me in auckland. this was the end of the quest for more than one reason.

the most obvious being with him on my tail (nearly literally) there was no way i could safely hold onto this basket. besides that i had no way now of getting rid of it. i'd hit every spot on the list ms. rhonwyn had given me...

okay all but one. however picton (which i had to skip due to the LAST time whiro caught up with me) was halfway across new zealand. now i was out of tickets and money to get around the country. meaning i was stuck on my own two feet to get me anywhere, and with a tireless immortal deity chasing me down my odds of making it out of auckland, that alone to picton were pretty much 0%.

in desperation at the auckland war memorial museum i'd come up with a REALLY stupid off the cusp plan. one that almost seemed to be working. not that i knew how it was going to actually save the basket... and there certainly was no chance i was going to live through it. that was for sure.

the key to my plan was that whiro chase me. which could only end in him catching me...

the reason i say this is that after running dozens and dozens of blocks through auckland i couldn't run anymore!

i'd done pretty good if you ask me. i'd managed to keep ahead of the immortal whiro, with his seemingly never ending supply of energy, and for a guy with supernatural powers he runs like an edmontosaur! with the speed advantage i had on my ornithomimid-like juvenile tyrannosaur body, i'd nearly lost whiro three times. the problem was that was me sprinting, and i'd of course have to slow back down to regain my energy. at which point he'd catch up...

till i finally reached a point where i couldn't run anymore at all. my legs were dead, and i could hardly stand up because of my gasping for air. the spot was actually pretty cool (though i never did learn what it was called). it was a stadium of some sort, and in front was a polynesian style totem pole. had it been different circumstances this would have been a great spot...

but as craig used to say "this is the way it is." whiro was once again caught up with me, and there was NOTHING i could do about it...

i'd fallen in an exhausted pile at the base of the totem pole which is where whiro caught up to me.

looking at this photo i didn't realize how well i could have camouflaged with the flowers just beside the darn pole!!!

"you have given me a good hunt kauwheke te kura [ancestor of the moa], but you're lack of courage here at the end disgusts me. could my brother tane not find a more brave warrior to be his champion and face me in battle?" whiro seemed to complain as he close in on me. wielding his mere or maori jade stone club he showed his intent to end my existence...

i let out a scream... not that it mattered the stadium was quite abandoned during this dull afternoon.

whiro laughed. "i shall not lie to you kauwheke te kura, i take great pleasure in this deed. not just for the trouble you have caused me in recovering the kete o te wananga i rightfully deserve, but because of this pathetic display of cowardice you give me now!"

he was right i realized out of my fear. i stopped screaming, and suddenly i had an odd calm about me. it was scary people of the web wide world. suddenly i didn't care i was about to die. i'd accepted it as matter of fact, and just started thinking through very detachedly how the last few seconds were going to play out...

"very well," i agreed. though i was exhausted, i stood up before him. "i shall face you at least standing on my own two feet."

whiro made an audible sound of satisfaction. he seemed to take a moment to savour the anticipation of the kill...

however my fight or flight instinct had kicked back in, and for once... my suppressed tyrannosaur instincts must have been stirred... i wasn't opting for flight now. i was going to fight!

it was almost like slow motion, but not really. my brain just registered stuff really fast (definitely unlike normal!!!) as they happened. whiro gripped his greenstone club tighter, and started to draw his arm back for the killing strike. as he started to advance on me i lunged at him. bearing my full killer crushing jaws at his chest...

had he not been made of greenstone himself, and not immortally or magic (i'm not sure which one) invulnerable, my bite would probably have killed him dead as i punctured his chest with my teeth and crushed his ribs with my incredibly strong bite. sadly though he was made of greenstone and he was invulnerable.

i just slammed off his torso as though i'd run into a brick... er greenstone wall (though in my defense i was defending myself. normally i'd never run into a wall). some of my teeth broke... its a good thing that in my case they'll grow back.

whiro stopped for moment. "i'm impressed their is a spirit of warrior buried somewhere within you," he stopped and starred at me. a long penetrating glare as though he was reading my very essence. "yes. under all that pākehā [maori word for european... though i think whiro used it here to mean modern society vs. traditional mysticism fearing cultures] conditioning lies a monster's soul waiting to be unleashed. in fact it is ready to come out any moment."

was he referring to my tyrannosaurid ways i'd been spending my whole life to avoid?

suddenly stopping whiro became very distracted by something afar. he turned to face it. just as i contemplated running again, whatever it was hit me too...

it was as though a shock wave from a nuclear blast had hit me... but yet not. i was unbelievably dizzy. something majorly magic had just happened! i suspected i knew what it was.

indeed my suspicion was correct... for back at the auckland museum part of my plan had panned out in a way i'd never anticipated...

remember that panel i'd been really stressed about in the marae. well there was a very good reason i was stressed about it. take a really close look at the picture...

did you notice the kete basket i'd hidden in the panel? well that's what i did.

the plan had been to hide it there, and hope i could distract whiro long enough for ms. rhonwyn to arrange for someone else to go and retrieve the basket and get it to picton.

only something very unexpected happened...

despite my having spent a few hours in the auckland museum and it doing nothing, now the basket suddenly decided that there was actually enough mana in the marae and that it was going to finally phase out of our reality...

somehow my plan had worked!!!!!!!!!!

i certainly wasn't expecting any of that to work out.

I'D ACCOMPLISHED THE MISSION!

not that i was going to get to enjoy the fruits of my victory.

as the pulse wave from the basket disappearing subsided (i'm thinking it was that much stronger a pulse of magic because the whole set of baskets had now gone) whiro snapped around to me. there was no need to guess what was going through his rock head.

gone was the composed god. before me was a crazed beast. he hunched over in a frightful manner, and emitted a most vicious growl. in this feral stance he advanced on me, mere posed before him.

as he closed, whiro pounced into the air to bring his entirety down upon me for the finished strike...

my life flashed before my eyes... wow had i seriously done so much and yet so little in my nearly five years of life?!?

i can remember in vivid detail, him descending on me in slow motion. my magic sense kicked in as an intense dizziness hit me once more. i thought this was my detecting my mystic natured doom finishing my existence...

little did i know behind me something was materializing...

before i know it a second greenstone figure swung in from over top me, and smashed whiro out of mid air! it was the awesome combat move i'd ever seen! (probably because it saved my life rather than it's kung funess). this new atua's (god i was assuming) hit sent whiro flying back several metres, and his mere flying from his clawed hands.

the comer took up a clearly aggressive stance between me and whiro (i smartly hid behind that statue). "you are to cease this at once whiro, and depart this realm forever!" it commanded in a really pissed off voice.

whiro's voice hissed in reply "so you finally dare to show yourself brother," ah i was right, the new comer was a god... as all the maori gods were related to each other. "this was your doing wasn't it. sending the kete back to the upper heavens. you and you're pathetic champion may have thwarted my reclaiming them, but neither of you shall live to enjoy your victory!!!"

suddenly a loud buzz filled the air as a great shadow fell from the sky to surround whiro. it was a massive army of his minions, the mosquitoes and sandflies, just like the ones that had attacked me in rotorua only there were way more of them here!... for a moment they menacingly, and very intimidatingly swarmed above their master...

than in unnaturally organized columns the legion of bugs charged my defender full on. sending him reeling from their impact. within seconds he was overwhelmed by the pests. though individually they were nothing. as an army their power was incredible. as the buzzing of their efforts grew deafeningly loud one could hear over the crunch and crack of rock... despite his greenstone composition my guardian was literally breaking under their assault!!!

just as all hope seemed lost for both him and me there came from under the buzzing and crunching a echoed voice, that despite being quite inaudible, resounded.

there was a great light, and my magic dizziness went into overdrive, as my defender finished casting his spell or incantation. the swarm of insects ignited as the powerful enchantment simply vaporized them (or something... i'm no wizard, and couldn't tell you the technical terminology for it... all i can say is they weren't there anymore).

my defender pulled himself off the ground. the breaks and fissures in his once smooth flawless greenstone body were now evident as this damage caused him to creak and crack as he moved.

"i warned you whiro," he bellowed in a both furious, but yet sadly disappointed tone. "just as i did thousands of years ago. once again you leave me no choice but to use the kete tuateu against you."

whiro who till now had been amazed and shocked into inaction by the destruction of his minions once again snapped into his bestial state and blindly rushed his brother.

once again my defender began his unearthly echoing chant, and a very very intense spell shot forth... striking whiro...

i could just make out through the humming of the spell, and the loud echo of my guardian's chanting whiro scream "i will not return to rarohenga [maori underworld]!" with this resolve he seemed to shoulder off the blast for a moment, but than the chanting increased volume and whiro started to demateralize!

moments later it was done whiro had been engulfed and swallowed by the blinding energy.

just like that the quest was over. both the kete AND whiro were gone... yet there remained something to remind me of what had just been happening.

my guardian walked over to me as i lay on the ground in a my exhausted, terrorified, and quizzy pile. looking up at him i expected him to speak. yet he said nothing. he just tilted his head so that it was alined with my own.

there we stayed for, what felt like anyway, a few minutes.

than from behind my saviour a bright glow erupted from... well it looked kinda like a crack through... thin air. he started to turn towards it as though to make his exit...

in all the confusion, action, and near death experience i hadn't pondered with my small brain who this might be. suddenly my neurons fired up on the subject, and i figured it out quick! like normal big brained human quick!!!

could this be tane? maori god of the forest. the one who had acquired the kete o te wananga in the first place.

rather than answer my questions about my guardian it simply raised more.

• why had he saved me?
• why hadn't he intervened sooner?
• if he could have sent whiro back to the underworld why hadn't he done that sooner?
  
• if he didn't want the baskets to fall into whiro's hands why hadn't he just taken them?
• why were the baskets going back the higher plains of reality now after being on earth for so long?
• was ms. rhonwyn in on all this?
• could he help me with my new magic problem?
• what was going to happen next? was i going to have to worry about whiro escaping?

as the glow increased, and he started to walk into it desperate for some answers i called out. "tane?"

with his back still turned to me the god stopped for a moment. rather than answer my question it simply said "i thank you."

it than resumed walking into the light which was incredibly intense now. a second later snapped off as though by a switch, and the god (tane???) was gone now just like whiro and the baskets...

THE END...

of the museum quest anyways... my life would go on... and in ways i couldn't possibly imagine. which is saying something considering what i saw today!

(Production Note: So now begins Traumador: Year 1.5)

small problems (museum quest part 21)

Location: Rotorua

Baskets Left: 2

after my first stop in rota-vegas (the kiwi's nickname for rotorua) i wasn't any closer to getting rid of any more of the maori artifacts for ms. rhonwyn. i'd been to the museum and nothing.

how was i going to find a place that matched te papa in majesty for these stupid baskets?

though i didn't know it at the time, my next stop was about to prove a whole lot more interesting than any i'd had on the north island yet...

my destination in the afternoon of my rotorua trip was to the volcanic geothermal springs just outside of town.

these hotsprings and the area's ongoing volcanic and geologic phenomenon were of great mythical and spiritual importance to the maori, and they of course had all manner of legends to explain the activities they saw going on around them.

we today now know that the reason for this is rotorua being a major intersection for fault lines through new zealand. due to this rotorua is geologically speaking a time bomb of volcanism which HAS gone off in the last 150 or so years, and both excitingly and sadly will likely go off again relatively soon (geologically speaking soon anyway).
_


this maori history was not lost on the owners of the hotsprings, and they'd decorated the place to give it that cultural feel.
_

when i looked it up (a future post i promise), i found out much of this art was done by REAL maori artisians, and unlike much of the art in town this art work was authentic... which may explain why so much mythologic activity was waiting for me inside!
_

the entrance even had a traditional style maori fortification wall, made of logs, surrounding the place. i wondered if it was to keep modern people out (which would be better done by a modern fence) or to keep something ancient just like the wall style inside? turns out i was asking a good question!
_

entering the geothermal park was like walking onto a different planet!


even the air seemed hostile and alieny! it smelt like really rotten eggs (caused by sulphur i learnt).

as a side note rotorua as a whole area smells like this when and if you visit... but at the geothermal park it REALLY smells!!! if you have a t-rex powerful nose like me its not fun...

fortunately despite the smell of weirdness the air was still breathable (unlike a real alien planet probably) so i wasn't going to need a space suit. not that the space suit would have made me look funny around here. the whole place was like the surface of the moon...


well okay the moon if it was still geologically active (which it isn't! the moon is of course just a piece of knock off earth rock that doesn't have a proper core or anything inside it).

all around me were boiling pools of water...


bubbling oozing mud puddles...


steaming craters...


just looking around i wonder if they've ever filmed a space movie here...

no wonder the maori considered this place so sacred. it isn't like anything i've seen before, and i've been around the world compared to an ancient maori!


speaking of maori, totems were scattered all throughout the hotsprings to remind those who dwelled here of both the mana and tapu of the place. mana being a maori word that means many things, but in this case the power and prestige of the place. tapu being the supernatural or mythic consequences of meddling with this place's sacredness. to violate this place's tapu was to invoke the wraith of the atua or gods.

i was here of course counting on the mana to make the last two baskests disappear back to wherever it is they came from...


in hopes of the baskets getting exposed to as much mana as they could i wandered further into the park...


of course i wasn't complaining. it was an awesome site to get to explore.


i was traumador, dinosaur of space command... hey that'd be cool cartoon don't you think ;p


as i reached the end of the trail i grew a little upset. again nothing had happened with the baskets.

taking my mind off it for a moment was the mini volcano in front of me. i felt like my hero godzilla at the end of the film godzilla 1985... though fortunately i didn't fall in like he did...


as i was about to head back towards the exit, i discovered i'd worried about the baskets not reacting too soon... i was over come with a woozy feeling, like i always seem to with magic type stuff now.

suddenly around the edge of the thermal field, blocking off the surrounding forest and bush, an ancient style wall and marae (maori sacred meeting place) materialized out of no where...

though i'm not sure why i knew it, but i could just tell this was a vision of days long gone. when the maori truly lived in unison with the power and awe of this place... don't get me wrong modern maori still are in tune with it, but this image was of a time when they didn't have the views and ideas of the bigger world pushed on them... this was one of the KEY places of maori mythology... and i'd brought the keys, the kete o te wananga, right into the heart of it.

whether for good or ill i was about to find out...

of course i still felt very dizzy (but not in the normal way... its hard to describe... especially with my small brain). so much so that my head seemed to buzz which had never happened before during these basket related incidents...

that is till i realized it wasn't buzzing inside my head... there was an actual buzzing sound, and it was getting louder...


i turned around to see a most odd sight. a GIANT swarm of insects. than i realized it was coming straight for me!

now to those out there who aren't mystically attuned like me now (actually come to think of it is there anyone else but me in that boat?) you'd still have found it an odd sight. a giant column of varied insects flying so uniformly and organized, like a flying army of marching soldiers. to those of us who SEE magic though it was a eerie sight. pulsing through the bug ranks was visible... mystic gradient radiation as ms. rhonwyn would call it... or as i like to say magic.

i was overcome with panic and dread as my peanut sized brain caught onto what was actually going on... there could only be one reason a gang of pests was coming right at me... they were after the baskets!!!

for a moment i thought they must be a manifestation of some new maori deity or atua i hadn't faced yet... that is till i remembered something (why i was wasting precious seconds pondering this i'm not sure people of the web wide world!). my now "good old" buddy whiro, maori god of darkness and suffering, had many minions and servants in the corporal world.

i of course was well acquainted with his chief messenger to mortals, the mesozoic surviving tuatara. whiro had already used them to catch up to me a few times.

i remembered a sign i'd read at milford sound. it was about the giant sandfly statues they had on the wall. it had said how these bugs were believed by the maori to be one of the forms whiro inflicted suffering on humanity.

of course i realized! in the legend of whiro's first attempt at getting the baskets from his brother god tane, whiro had rallied an army of his servants to ambush tane on his return to earth, and steal the baskets from him on route. this army had been comprised mostly of the "plight" variety of insects and birds. the bugs were namely sandflies and mosquitoes which JUST SO happened to be the same sort that were flying at me now!

i might have ditched whiro back on the south island, but i hadn't lost him!


during all that thinking (which used up ALL my limited brain power) the swarm had caught up to me. before i knew it they were all over me...
_
OH THE TORMENT people of the web wide world. i can't describe the suffering i felt than!... incidentally whiro definitely lives up to his role as god of suffering (i think they should also tack annoyance on there too though!).

i was covered in mozzies and sandflies... most of whom immediately tried to tap into my blood...

fortunately for me i'm covered in hard bug proof scales. unfortunately with this many mini vampires all over me (i'm scarred of vamps now all the more by the by!) very weak spot in between my scaly armour was pierced and drained... now if it's hard for a bug to bite let me assure you people of the innerweb it's even harder to scratch!!!
_
even worse had them flying into my eyes, nose, ears, and mouth when i opened it to scream... soooooooooooo gross... ew ew ewwwww.

between the almost painful itches that perfectly outlined every exposed scale on my body, the irritation of my under assault openings, and my choking on bugs i almost missed what the remaining few were up to...

if i had to guess the main attack was not only to insanly irritate me, but it was also to kill me! if i'd let that many blood sucker stay on me much longer they'd probably have drained me dry (yes i know swarms like this exist in nature, and don't kill things... but these were magically driven bugs, and they weren't behaving normal. they'd suck till they popped, and then their other enchanted cohorts would jump on the empty spot and start all over).

yet at the same time some of the pests were flying into my shirt pocket, and as a team were landing on and trying to fly off with the baskets!!!

now i don't like to admit this people of the innerweb... but i for the most part played right into their hands... uh wings? er... or is it tarsus?!? anyways i reacted just how whiro wanted.

keep in mind people of the innerweb i was covered in thousands of simultaneously biting mosquitoesand sandflies. it's not like i thought about or planned to do this...

as i felt the baskets start to take off, i grabbed the first one to float out of my pocket out of my current instinctive blind grasping at the air. for a moment i used it to futilely try to brush the bugs off, but of course it did nothing... the one good thing to come of it though my motion knock the other basket back into my pocket for the moment.

the biting didn't get any better though! out of desperation i tossed the basket aside... yes i know people of the web wide world BAD MOVE. you try being sucked dry and act rationally!!!

instantly half the legion broke off from me and pursued their goal... once it fell to the ground there was enough of them to easily wisk it away...

there was only one problem... for them!... i'd blindly unthinkingly thrown the basket at a mudpool...

as it landed the swarm pounced on it, and began to take off with it. they nearly got away with the basket when the puddle splurted covering the basket with scolding hot goo. the basket plummeted back into the pool, and this time sank deeper.
_
with the relief of half the insects off me i was able to gather my brain enough to focus on protecting my remaining basket which some of the swarm were still trying to nab...

meanwhile their comrades dealing with the pool were suffering. every reattempt at the steadily sinking basket would result in a wave being covered in mud, and the now heavier and heavier with mud coating basket would sink that much more. meaning that more and more bugs would have to go in for their retrieval wave.

within 2 minutes the other half was completely depleted. seriously they'd all disappeared. the half the army still harassing me seemed to realize this (through the magic is the only way i can explain it), and all broke contact with me to make one go at the now completely submerged kete.


though within second the insects had all disappeared in their mindless plunge into the mud after the basket the activity hadn't stopped. suddenly i was overcome with the same piercing pulse of wozziness i'd had when the first basket disappeared at te papa.

that basket was dematerializing in the mud...

suddenly i had a most disenheartening though... the basket was being drawn away by the bug's magic field! i'd failed in my mission!!!

ms. rhonwyn had warned me that if i lost even one of the baskets whatever took it could use it to retrieve the other two. no matter where i hid or disposed of them! whiro was about to win!!!

suddenly as though in response to my panic the basket shoot up out of mud in a furious splash. as the glare and intense light of the now mana envoked kete drew away from the pool's surface i could make out the bug soup it'd made of the swarm. the whole legion of whiro's minions were dead, and their mystic gradient field had been snuffed out with them apparently!

the basket hovered for a moment, and than in as specacular a display as the first vanished from not only view, but this realm of reality...

despite coming withing millimetres of defeat i'd somehow won! and it barely cost me a thing... well apart from a body wide insanity invoking itch!!! seriously action movie heroes have it off easy with cuts and battle wounds... you try being turned into a walking mosquito bite and coping with it!!!

Location: Rotorua

Baskets Left: 1!!!!!!!

_

the end was getting nearer...

viva rota-vegas!

Location: Rotorua

Baskets: Left: 2
_

compared to the south island of new zealand, the north island doesn't have quite as many spots of interest. not that i'm saying its not as nice. their just very different places.

the north island of new zealand is much more populated by people, and as of such it's got a much more civilized feel to it. there also aren't quite so many museums or natural place... well at least museums on ms. rhonwyn's list (there just aren't AS many natural places period!).

as of today's stop i was half through the north island locations i had to explore. that having been said i was going to find these stops were much more intensive than the ones i made on the south island...

today i hit rotorua. tourism capital of the north island (apart from maybe napier, but ms. rhonwyn didn't want me to stop there). the kiwi's affectionately call this place rota-vegas due to its tourist magnet nature... though i'm not seeing many casinos or bright lights...

if i was going to call this place something it'd have something to do with the maori... not only because of all the maori sculptures and art put here for visitors, but as it turns out this place historically was a KEY site for the maori throughout their entire history here in new zealand...

my first stop in rotorua was the visitor centre. i was going to need some info on the two stops in town ms. rhownyn wanted me to take the flax baskets i still had left.

i got my first clue as to rotorua's most special feature was, in the form of a pool of warm water outside the info centre. at the time i didn't make the connection as to what the feature was.



inside the info centre was some cool maori statues, like this one here. i wondered as i walked by if it was enchanted like the last such statue i'd encountered in a lobby like this...

the people at the info centre were very helpful, and gave me all i would need to hit my destinations... though like any good tourist information officer they also tried to convince to check out some of rotorua's other MANY attractions... of course due to the urgency of my mission, and the fact that whiro couldn't be that far behind me, i had to resist these temptations.

on my way out i spotted this wacky contraption. it was an aqua bus, and it'd take you on not only a road trip but also a water one too... one example of some of the varied and interesting things this town had to offer.


to get to my first stop i had to wander through rotorua's massive shopping district. half the town seems to be made of souvenir shops and galleries. in the window of the first shop i passed i spotted this creepy cyberaptor... i worried a little bit... this was not the first borgosaurus i'd seen!

i also saw this salmon statue. these would turn out to be a town wide thing...

after finally making it through the field of purchasing temptations i came to the rotorua botanic garden.

like all the others i'd encountered on this quest, i thought it be cool to see how my home would be different had i settled in rotorua (because of course people of the innerweb i live in dunedin's botanic garden).

i have to say of all the other gardens i've visited in new zealand, rotorua's is DEFINITELY the most different from dunedin's!!!

within a few meters i stumbled into a fenced off... i couldn't believe my eyes!... smoking crater!!!

had an asteroid landed in the park?... or worse an alien tripod machine that was going to burst out of the ground and start raining down destruction on us pathetic earthlings?!?... man it sucks sometimes having a brain the size of a peanut (okay it actually sucks most of the time to be fair!), my imagination often clouds my thinking abilities for a while...

it actually turned out to be a volcanic mudpool. the whole park was FULL of them!!!

rotorua is one of new zealand's most volcanically active locations, and the whole region is jampacked with geothermal phenomenon.

pools of mud and water warmed by the heat of the magma filled ground below them. kinda like a pot on an oven. sometimes these get so hot that the water "explodes" (it's actually steam pushing liquid water really hard) that geysers come from a few of these special pools. sadly i didn't bump into any geysers while i was in town, but i know they are there...

i'd see a lot more mudpools, and geothermal stuff at my second stop (my next post).

there were some cool birds in the park too, that i got nice and close to. this shag (or cormorant as there called elsewhere in the world) was swimming around catching fish. i'd never got anywhere NEAR this close to one before. they typically fly away when you get no where near them!


there was also a family of pretty black swans.

after quite a ways (their botanic garden is big eh) i finally made it to the museum end of the gardens.

you'll note more of the ever present maori artwork of rotorua here.

the gardens is surrounded by a very picturesque set of bowling pitches (lawn bowling that is for my northern innerwebers).

i wasn't sure whether to laugh or scratch my head when i saw a guy whose job is to flatten all the grass so its bowlable. he drove around on the funniest lawnmower/lawnflatter machine i'd ever seen...

so here i was at the first of my destinations in rotorua, the museum.

it was a very nice museum. however sadly i wasn't allowed to take any pictures inside...

also worth noting this was the FIRST museum in all of new zealand i'd encountered that required admission! not that i think it's bad for museums to ask for money to help run themselves. just after seeing SO many other museums in the country with free entrance, it was a bit of a surprise!

outside they had more of the salmon statues i'd seen in the shopping district. i was told they were an art fund raiser, and that many such other statues were all over town.

there were also more cool maori inspired statues in front.

this one both intrigued and frightened me a little. i wasn't get the tingle of magic like i had been when odd stuff was about to happen, but the face on this statue made me feel like it was somehow watching me...

there were tons of awesome displays inside the museum. many on the local maori, who were among the most important and influential of them all. there was also a lot about the local history.

it turns out that rotorua has ALWAYS been a big tourist attraction due to its volcanics. the maori who first settled here did so because of it. they fought many wars over this land due to it. the europeans were coming down here before new zealand was even formally a country!!!

in those early days of european visitation the big draw of big draws were the pink and white terraces. as you can see from this picture above (i stole off the innerweb from here) the pink terraces (and the unpictured in this post white terraces) were naturally formed stair like structures. they were huge. the larger white terraces covered 3 hectares and was 30 metres tall!

formed by stuff called calcium bicarbonate (sounds like a diet supplement!) hardening and crystallizing as it poured down from a volcano. this created tons and tons of water enclosed structures some as small as sinks some as big as a LARGE hottubes!

people would come down to new zealand back when world vacationing wasn't heard of to visit them. in fact they were the 8th wonder of the world (NOT king kong!!! stupid dirty ape!).

were you might ask?

well on a fateful day in 1886 the volcano these two phenomenons were attached to violently erupted, and blow the terraces as well as much of the surrounding area away.

there are stories of a ghost waka (maori war canoe) paddling along the lake just before, a mythical warning of the disaster. there was much talk of the local maori forgetting their ways, and the volcano being the gods punishing them for their greed and wealth from the visiting europeans. i wonder with my new annoying mystic sense, if i'd have notice any of this magic element of the event or if it was just a plain old geologic event?

anyways that was my favourite display of the museum, and i thought i'd share it with you people of the web wide world...

little did i realize outside the museum a modern mystic event was taking form...

across the well cared for bowling pitches the hum of a most unusual army filled the air. though i was unaware of it this swarm of insects was flying towards the museum, and it wasn't coming to check out the displays...

next: a new mythic confrontation will begin...