Te Puia - Rotorua, NZ

Te puia is a big visitor centre offering different visitor experiences depending on the type of ticket you purchase.

Located on the side of a busy highway on the outskirts of Rotorua,  it is easy to find and has a huge free car park with plenty of space for large motorhomes.

Te Puia is a well oiled machine, catering for large visitor numbers.

We booked the evening Hangai dinner. This does not include entry to the visitor park (that's a separate ticket), but what it does give you is dinner (inc tea/coffee/ water), a show and a look at/ short walk around site of their Geyser whilst enjoying a hot chocolate after dinner.

Dinner itself was not a small affair. Our group was easily 50+ people. We were served at the same time as others who had been on the earlier afternoon tour....bringing numbers up to 100+ people...all of which was catered for in the huge on-site restaurant (self service buffet style), almost like being at the dinner buffet of a chain hotel, so sadly there was nothing cultural about it, other than some of the dishes and the fact that they had been cooked in the below ground cooker. In order to cater for this many people the below ground cooker is a commercial sized sunken stainless steel affair.

The food, apart from a few dishes and the inclusion of some different ingredients was very Westernised. On offer were a cooked ham, ribs, lamb, chicken drummers, salmon, a selection of vegetables, rice and randomly some stir fried noodles. Also salad and pasta bar;  seafood section (inc king prawns and oysters);  commercial desert cart with everything from profiteroles to steamed pudding with custand, pavlova and tiramisu on it. Some nationalities appeared to be treating the all you can eat buffet as a challenge, seeing how much food they could shovel in before waddling out of the dining room.

The show itself was the best part, held in the large on site traditional building which is inlaid with carvings made onsite. The centre has an arts & crafts school. Money raised from tours funds the school. The show comprised of course the Hakka, but also other songs and dances. The group performing were very good.

Annoyingly, although people were told to be silent during the show,  there were a lot of very disrespectful nationalities present who chatted the whole way through the show ruining it for others. One of these disrespectful people even decided to answer his phone and have a full blown conversation during the show, until he was lambasted by another guest!  Te Pui really should make an announcement at the outset telling people to put their phones on flight mode.

After dinner the short 2 min walk to the Geyser in the setting sun was a good end to the evening, especially as the Geyser was busy performing for us. A lady there had a hot thermos and was serving everyone paper cups of hot chocolate.

On balance a good evening. For us as a family it was way too busy/  commercialised and had a "pile em high" bums on seats feel about it. However, if we had not booked this show, then we would not have experienced any Mauri culture at all during our month stay in NZ because although there are a lot of sites in NZ and plenty of information on boards everywhere,  you have to get involved in such an experience to immerse yourself  in the culture..It's not like being in e.g Thailand or Indonesia where its all around you.