Time for Taupo, But Not Before The Most Awkward Concert Ever

Saturday was our last day in Rotorua.  

We recovered from the night before by visiting Hell's Gate, a geothermal wonderland, or so we thought.  It was actually pretty lame and the Tallest Hot Water Waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere was a complete let down.  We did get to sit in a mud pool, which was more of a pool than mud, and we had the woman take our picture covered in mud.  Overall, the experience was mediocre, but out skin feels nice!  That night was Lakefest, an outdoor concert right next to Lake Rotorua.  We caught the tail-end of the concert and were fortunate enough to witness quite possibly the most awkward ending to a concert ever.  First of all, the closing act was Australian Idol winner (and native Kiwi) Stan Walker, and after performing only two songs, he ran off stage so he could be called out for an encore (weird).  The encore began and about 30 seconds in, the CD playing over the speakers began to skip.  He wasn't lip synching, but the band playing behind him was quite fake.  So he asked for the CD to be stopped and, although he had trouble keeping the guitar player (his brother) playing to a consistent beat, they performed the final song successfully.  Next, the MC came out and started performing a song he had already performed earlier in the night after saying something to the extent that EVERYONE wanted him to be the final act.  I haven't seen people flee a concert so quickly.  After that awful performance, he tried to sing ANOTHER song, but was interrupted by another act.  After that one, he came out AGAIN and sang "Time Of My Life" with some other woman, and as the song went on, it seemed they just started throwing all the other acts on stage to sing with them because he was horrible.  It was clearly not planned.

But finally at the climax of the song came the most amazing fireworks we've ever seen.  It felt like we saw the future of fireworks and it was clear  Rotoura spent heaps of money on the show.  The fireworks were SO GOOD that we can't explain it and you probably should have been there... We were so mesmerized by them, we didn't realize that everyone was still on stage and STILL singing.  Just when we thought the travesty was all over with, the MC guy came out again and had an old guy who I'm almost positive was Tony Bennett come on stage and sing another song.  We don't know if the concert kept going or not, because we had enough with the awkwardness and were ready for some well deserved Dominos.

Sunday we left for Taupo, the site we will be skydiving and bungy jumping. With a big week ahead of us, we took two days to relax, though we had a surprise visit from Federico (from Kerikeri) and his cousin, Rami, which was pretty cool.  We have friends in New Zealand!