Tauranga (Rotorua)

Day 13:

Early this morning, we docked in Tauranga at the foot of Mount Maunganui which is a small round hill on the end of a peninsula. Yesterday, we had booked a hire car so we could drive to Rotorua to see the hot springs and this was waiting for us on the quay.

After breakfast we headed east, then south and down the east side of Rotorua to the town which is on the south side of the lake. We started to smell the sulphur while still some distance away. Once in town, we found the tourist information place and worked out where to go. We then drove to a large park very close to the centre of town which is the newest geothermal area having only erupted about 20 years ago. We wandered around and found lots of different sorts of geothermals: bubbling mud pools, clear bubbling water, steaming lakes. The smell was quite strong - Jack didn't like it at all and left us to go and climb around a playground. It wasn't quite the rotten egg smell we expected, although definitely related.

We then drove to a village on the edge of the lake with a Maori meeting house and all sorts of Maori carvings, as well as more hot springs. It was quite freaky driving past houses whose front lawns were steaming and the gutters often bubbled and steamed. Not surprisingly, it was a warm place.

We went to a section of the lake called Sulphur Point where there were masses of birds nesting and swimming around despite the lack of any food for them in the warm and milky looking water. We got out and walked around an area where the bubbling pools were depositing yellow sulphur on the rocks. This place DID smell just like rotten eggs.

After a tour of the town, we decided that we didn't want to stop and eat in the smell, so we drove back up the western side of the lake. Along the way, we passed lot of grazing animals. Sheep and cows as expected but also a couple of herds of vicunas (or maybe alpacas) and a herd of deer.

We got back to the ship mid-afternoon and found it almost deserted as most people had gone on longer tours of the area.