Baaaaaa!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Now that Ro's in Kindy, we're pretty much restricted to Fri, Sat, and Sun for trips out of town, so we didn't want to waste a beautiful Sunday hanging around The Mount, which we can do anytime. Geez, we're already taking paradise for granted. After many ideas were thrown around, we decided to head back to Rotorua to see one of the sites that we had hoped to see yesterday but ran out of time. Kris and Tracy had recommended it to us a few weeks ago - The Agrodome. Originally a part of the Osaka World Expo in 1970, it was started by a world-champion sheep-shearer of the time; the operation was then moved to NZ permanently and has become a North Island tradition.

Ro loved the giant wooden Kiwi bird; alas, it wasn't stable enough to climb

...but the sheepdog statue was

When we first got there, we browsed through the gift shop which sported the usual tourist trinkets, but also a bunch of wool-related items, including some beautiful merino sweaters. Sherry freaked when she saw the cheap prices...then realized those were the sizes. There was a little stable next to the Agrodome with some sheep and lambs that Ro loved petting before the show. He even told the lambs "No one's going to eat you here!"

Ro gets down to lamb's eye level

The Agrodome sheep show began with them bringing out 19 different sheep breeds onto the wings of the stage for the audience to come up and pet and take pictures with. The MC, a burly guy with a thick Kiwi accent brought the sheep up on the main stage one at a time, with a funny blurb about what made each breed unique. Yes, sheep-humor is more than the jokes you might expect, and it was actually pretty good. The MC had everyone in the audience identify themselves by nationality, and it was a pretty good mix. He looked a little surprised when he asked if there were any Filipinos in the audience, and Ro was the only one who piped up! Mostly, I think he did it to tailor his jokes to whoever was there, or more to the point, "at" whoever was there. Aussies (who Kiwis jokingly regard as lazy drunkards) and Americans (who they see as uptight and spoiled) were the target of most of the good-natured barbs.

A Dorset Horn and Sherry get acquainted

Ro chillin' with a Merino

The show then progressed to a sheep-shearing demonstration; the speed with which the MC cut the wool off was pretty impressive. Then they brought out their sheepdogs, which was the highlight of the show for Ro. The dogs would actually run across the backs of the sheep as if they were stepping stones in a pond. After the show, the audience was invited up on stage to pet the dogs and the sheep again.

A sheep about to get shorn

The Agrodome sheep show. Note the dog running across them

Outside, they soon brought the dogs out to show what they could really do, namely herding sheep through an obstacle course and into a pen. We then boarded a tram for a tractor tour of the surrounding farm. There were two trams, actually, one with the tour in Mandarin Chinese, and the other in English. There are so many Asian tourists here, sometimes we feel like we're at Disneyland. The farm tour wound past ostriches, emus, cattle, deer, and more sheep than we could count. There were kiwi and feijoa orchards, olive groves, and a stop to sample local kiwi juice and honey. The highlight of the tour, however, was when we got to mingle with and feed the llamas, alpacas and sheep.

Sherry and her favorite llama

By the time the tour ended, it was getting late, so we stopped in the cafe for some Hokey-Pokey ice cream to sustain us on the drive home until dinner. We were all craving burgers by the time we reached Tauranga, so we stopped at BurgerFuel, which Mark had gotten turned onto at work (the nurses get takeaway from there all the time)...think Char-Grill (for you Raleigh-ites) but with Red Robin's variety. They even have little cardboard burger holders called "Doofers" so you can keep all the ingredients in your bun as you eat without them squirting out the other side. And don't forget the kumara fries!