Rotorua Day Five – Sheep, Blueberries and Some Very Colourful Water

Our last full day in Rotorua began with the much anticipated trip to the sheep show at the Agrodome. We had no idea what to expect at such a show (other than sheep presumably), but surely it was going to be great … I mean … sheep … in a show … in a dome … what more could you ask for?

We were ushered into a large auditorium (the dome) and settled back to enjoy the entertainment. To begin with, we were introduced to each major type of sheep (there were around 20 altogether) and given that type's major characteristics, origins, etc. The best ones were the Merino, Drysdale and Dorset Horn – being the fluffiest, hairiest and the one with the craziest looking horns respectively.



There was then a demonstration of sheep shearing, followed by a “rounding up the ducks” on-stage dog show. This all took a fair few minutes, and some of the older sheep clearly found all the excitement a bit too much ...


The master of ceremonies soon had them back on their feet though with a “dogs jump on the backs of the sheep for no practical reason other than entertainment” demonstration.



After all the fun and games we were at liberty to take a huge number of photos with our favourite sheep, and then we all trooped outside to watch a proper sheep dog demo.



After this Liz and I spotted something called a “nursery” behind the auditorium and decided to check it out. We crept in, and to our delight were presented with a load of little lambs. One of the members of staff said we could get into the pen with them if we wanted, so we did and spent the next half hour or so taking pictures of ourselves manhandling the lambs …

The sheep show was all we had hoped for, and to sweeten the deal we made our way to a place called Manuka Blue – a blueberry farm we had scoped out on the way back from Te Puia the day before. This place provides free tastings of a whole host of jams, chutneys, sauces and various alcoholic beverages all made from the tiny super fruit. We stopped for an extensive tasting session, then had lunch in the attached blueberry themed restaurant. I had a venison and blueberry pie, whilst Liz went for a bagel with blueberry jam and cream cheese, followed by a blueberry crumble to share. It was blueberry-tastic.

For the afternoon we made our way to a place called Wai-O-Tapu – another geothermal type place on the outskirts of Rotorua. This place was definitely our favourite of the lot since, along with the quintessential bubbling mud, there lots of pools filled with brightly coloured water. The best was the “champagne pool” where a deep aquamarine pool was surrounded by a ring of tango coloured orange rock. The pool gets its name from the thousands and thousands of tiny bubbles constantly rising to the surface.



Our tour of the park ended with a few more coloured pools, including a wonderful green one, as well as some of the best examples of bubbling mud we had seen so far.