We arrived quite late in the evening, so as with most first days our evening was spent wondering around getting used to the area, Rotorua is a city that is similar size to that of our own hometown and yet it’s expansive amounts of shops and restaurants completely puts our hometown to shame. The city or township as they are generally referred to in NZ is set out much in the same way as towns in the states. For our evening meal we were highly adventurous and chose Nando’s - it’s cheap, which also gave us the chance to watch the All Blacks play for the first time. I must admit when it comes to Rugby I’m pretty clueless (more of a football/soccer man) and Jen had no idea what was going on AT ALL.
On our first full day we realised how much there is to do in Rotorua and also the fact that we were inevitably going to spend a lot of money- oh well we’re on holiday. So our day started with a sightseeing tour of the area and the three lakes; Lake Rotorua and the originally named Green and Blue lakes. It was however a tour with a difference, on a 60 year old American amphibious truck aptly named the Duck.
The tour was unique, interesting and ridiculously funny. After our tour we jumped on one of the city buses and headed out to Skyline sky adventures, where due to some mechanical issues we couldn’t go up the gondola (cable car) though this worked to our advantage as it saved us a significant amount of money and we were offered the alternative free bus journey up the hill- bargain. When at the top we hopped on the luge, for those of you unfamiliar with the luge, basically you sit in a sledge with wheels with a bar in front of you that you push forward to go and back to brake, you then hurtle down a mile and a half downhill track round sharp bends that in this case sit on the edge of quite dramatic drops at whatever speed you choose; which in my case was very fast and a lot slower in Jen’s. After the thrill you head back up in a ski lift to the top to do it again, the ski lift was worst part of the whole thing- I dislike heights especially when you’re sitting in a small metal seat dangling over open air.
Jen decided from here the best bet would be to walk back to Kuirau Park, which is a volcanic park you can wonder around completely free of charge. Anyway Jen’s short walk turned out to be about 40 minutes away, I knew I shouldn’t have believed her. The park itself is complete with a crater like lake, sulphur pools, boiling mud with temperatures exceeding 90 degrees Celsius and a lot of very unpleasant smells, however it’s definitely worth a visit.
After our (not so) hard day we decided to get a bottle of wine and we finally found a wine that we liked while in New Zealand- our sweet tooth isn’t catered for much by the looks of it, unfortunately the wine was from Australia… sacrilege.
Our second day was based around the main thing we wanted to while in Rotorua, which was Wai-O-Tapu and the Lady Knox Geyser. The Lady Knox Geyser erupts everyday around 10:15am with the help of a little bit of soap to induce the explosion.
From the geyser we headed out to the main park, unfortunately our allotted tour time wasn’t as much as we would have wanted, though we did manage to do the entire walk (75 minutes return) and time to photograph- though we were both in agreement we could have spent a lot more time strolling around. Having said that we were glad to be smelling reasonably normal air after an hour and a half. The area is great for photograph opportunities, and the effects of the chemical deposits give off some amazingly surreal colours. The park also comes complete with many craters, a waterfall and a massive champagne pool (named so because of the bubbling effect).
As the weather was so nice we decided to spend our afternoon chilling at Lake Rotorua, this soon changed as I decided to become the captain of my own ship… a scary thought for those of you who know me. We rented a Pontoon boat for the afternoon and went tearing around the lake- well, maybe more like a leisurely stroll but it did seem pretty quick. Jen had no trust in my driving skills and I think she was glad to see the sight of land on return, though she did get some pictures of our nautical adventure.
From here we were in desperate need of an ice cream due to the great weather, we found a little place called Lady Jane’s ice cream parlour and the ice cream was AMAZING, so many flavours- Jen was in heaven and it was pretty good value.
Our final day before departed to Lake Taupo was a short one so we spent the day walking around the government gardens and walking around the Rotoura museum of art and history. The museum is quite small and unfortunately there was a lot of construction walk going on, however the exhibitions were informative and interesting- especially the history of the bath houses.
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