New Zealand, Rotorua: Sheep and Smelly Thermal Wonders

The infamous hydrothermal area of Rotorua was the next destination on our campervan trip around New Zealand. The town was situated near the centre of the North Island, was one of the most visited sights in the country, and was one of the few places in the world where people are able to witness firsthand the power of volcanic activity taking place underneath the earth's surface. There were locations within the town of Rotorua itself where hydrothermal activity was busily showing itself off, but the main areas of thermal interest, also the most spectacular, visually, were found a few miles out of town.

Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland was the most well-known thermal area and the place we chose to visit, so we could learn more about thermal activity and get a close glimpse of the amazing natural occurrences. When we finally made it to Wai-O-Tapu, we learnt that it was the largest area of surface activity for any hydrothermal system around the globe. Read on and you will understand how amazing the place was to visit!

The smells we had to draw in through our nostrils were often of the "rotten egg" variety

Before actually arriving in Rotorua, we had decided to visit Agrodome, a large complex offering unusual "thrill seeker" activities and various sheep displays that included a live stage show. The show included a sheep-shearing demonstration and an introduction to the many different types of domesticated sheep; we bought tickets for the show in order to learn more about the animals, knowing that we would see them all over the country in the next few weeks. Agrodome sold a combination ticket that included entrance to the show and a couple of thrill seeker activities, and we went for that option. The activities we chose to do were Shweebing and Zorbing.

Agrodome was a few miles outside of Rotorua and on our way from Matamata, so we stopped off there before making our way to the Top 10 Rotorua Holiday Park, where we planned to stay for a couple of evenings. We arrived at Agrodome in the early afternoon and checked out the show times as soon as we parked our campervan. Our timing was good - there was a show starting an hour after we had arrived and the hour wait would give us time to go to the Shweeb and Zorb activities we had purchased with our tickets. In addition to the two activities we chose, Agrodome also offered several other activities such as speed jet-boating, swooping, extreme freefall body flying and bungy jumping.

The Shweeb velodrome was the world's first human-powered monorail racetrack. It consisted of two 200-metre long overhead rail circuits that varied in height between two and four metres above the ground. Under the tracks were high performance pedal powered vehicles. Between one and five vehicles could be loaded onto each track, enabling teams to race each other or against the clock, but we were the only ones there at the time and we each had our own track to race along. When we were loaded into the "capsule", which was a seated bicycle hanging below the rail and encased in clear plastic, with no ground contact at all, we felt like we were starring in an episode of "The Jetsons". As we reached speeds up to 60km per hour, we found ourselves racing around the track and enjoying the ride (well, one of us was, at least).

The track spanned around a small field and featured a couple of dips and raised sections to make the journey a little more fun, yet taxing at times. The guys running the Shweeb said that the ride had only been open for a month and they had been keeping track of any records set by customers from different countries. From the start, Dan had the technique mastered and nearly beat the UK speed record, but Kyle had gotten confused by something he was told as he climbed into his capsule, and he gave up halfway, choosing to relax and enjoy the ride rather than race to the finish. When we finished our three laps around the track, we climbed out of our capsules and headed to our campervan so we could drive down the road to the Zorb activity section of Agrodome's grounds.

For anyone who doesn't know what a Zorb is, we'll explain it the best that we can. A Zorb was a large, inflated, clear plastic (soft like the plastic used for an inflatable raft) ball that bounced on the ground and was good for rolling down hills, once people had been stuffed inside it. When we bought our ticket for the Zorb, we were given the option for a wet or dry ride. The wet ride would have featured us inside the ball (up to 3 people could fit inside), slipping and sliding, as the ball raced down a steep grassy hill. That option didn't mean that we would have been tumbling head over heels inside the ball; instead, sitting inside the wet ball was like going down a water slide. The dry option would have had us each strapped inside a Zorb of our own before the large ball was pushed down the hill, somersaulting over and over as it approached the bottom. We chose the dry option because we were on limited time, with the sheep show due to start 20 minutes after we signed a disclaimer preventing the people running the Zorbs from getting into trouble if, or when, we broke our necks trying to complete the adventurous activity.

Dan went first in the Zorb and Kyle had no idea how he felt when he made it to the bottom, since he was still waiting at the top of the hill, ready to climb into a Zorb of his own, when Dan's ride was finished. He saw Dan dive into the Zorb at the start and knew that it was the way he would be required to enter his ball. He also saw Dan being strapped into a chair-like seat inside the Zorb, having his ankles, chest and wrists strapped to provide him being flung around when the ball was set into action.

As the ball bounced and rolled down the hill, Kyle realised that the ride would probably seem to last much longer than it actually did, and he dove into his Zorb wondering how ill he would feel afterwards. At the same time that Kyle dove into his Zorb, Dan was stumbling to the lockers where he had put his trainers (that's the same as tennis shoes for the Americans reading this), so he could put them back on. Note that, when Zorbing, we weren't allowed to wear shoes of any kind. Also, note that Dan was stumbling to the lockers because he was dizzy and nauseous from the ride, something that Kyle was soon to experience as his Zorb settled at the bottom of the hill.

When we left the Zorb activity and headed back to the main building at Agrodome, we decided that the two activities were probably not worth the money we paid. Throughout our time in New Zealand, we felt that activities and entrance fees were priced much higher than they should have been, and those two rides were no exception; the Zorb and Shweeb were also somewhat lame with little reward afterwards. However, we had to take advantage of the unusual activities on offer, if only to include an interesting (we hope!) story in our travel journal for our 2007 around-the-world trip. We made it to the sheep show just as they were closing the doors and joined a large audience that had already taken their seats. Kyle found a seat in the second row so he could take pictures during the show, but Dan stayed towards the back of the audience because there weren't two seats together in the front.

The presenter during the show was a lively man who had clearly been around sheep for his entire life. He was super enthusiastic and funny, giving everyone a good show. There were several occasions where people from the audience were pulled onto stage or talked to, and this made the show very interesting and fun to watch. The first thing that the presenter did was introduce the many different types of domesticated sheep that were used to provide wool or food products. As he introduced each one, he told us what they were good for (e.g. lamb meat, or wool for clothing), and each sheep example ran up from the sides of the room and climbed a set of steps to join their place on stage.

There were at least fifteen different breeds of sheep on stage by the time the man had run though them all, and they were standing, or sitting, on a set of steps in front of name placards describing the breed (e.g Suffolk or Merino). Most of the breeds of sheep were European, but all of the types of sheep were used across farms in New Zealand, providing a variety of products for both Kiwis and as exports to other countries. After the introductions had been made, the sheep stayed in their spots throughout the rest of the show, happily nibbling on the food that was placed at each of their stations. We think that a few little nuggets were dispensed from behind some of the sheep, too.

The rest of the show included sheep dog demonstrations, sheep shearing, cow milking and lamb feeding. There were two types of sheep dogs, one that uses its eyes to control the sheep, never barking, and one that uses its loud, intimidating bark to corral the animals. The dogs were really cute and, at one point, they climbed over and jumped on top of the sheep's backs to get them to move one way or another. The sheep just stood there and let the dogs do this, which we thought was very unusual. The sheep shearing demonstration was over in just a couple of minutes; it was amazing how quickly a sheep could be sheared by someone with experience. The cow milking and lamb feeding were audience participation activities and Kyle was pulled up on stage with a few other people to feed the lambs milk from bottles.

The show lasted an hour and we were happy to have seen it, much happier than we were after getting nauseous in the Zorbs and spending wasted money on that and the Shweeb activity. After the show ended, we were able to climb up onto the stage and pet the sheep, getting a closer look at the different breeds. There was also a corral with several lambs inside, and we were able to walk around that and play with the lambs. After spending time with the baby sheep, we left Agrodome, headed straight for the Top 10 Rotorua Holiday Park. We checked in for two nights and parked Bessie, our campervan, at one of the power and water sites there.

Kuirau Park was next to the Top 10 where we stayed, and we visited the park as soon as we had set up our campervan for the night. It was early evening but the sun was still out, and we walked around the park for an hour, looking at the different thermal displays there. There was no entry fee to walk around the park and look at the thermal activity, which we thought was good. We saw many examples of thermal pools and bubbling mud pools. Steam was rising from each of the pools and the stench of sulphur was strong in the air. It was amazing to think about the cause of the thermal activity, knowing that parts of the ground could collapse at any time, or that the ground could blow upwards, just like a volcano.

As we walked around the park, we noticed a bright orange, sometimes reddish-brown, algae growing on plants and trees around the thermal pools; this was actually classed as a green algae and had the name Trentepohlia. The colour was due to an orange pigment that hid the normally green pigment of plants, otherwise known as chlorophyll. When we had seen enough of the park to satisfy our thermal cravings for the evening, we started walking towards the Rotorua town centre to check it out.

The town was small but had a nice centre part with many restaurants, bars and cafes. We found a nice cafe with some computers set up for internet access, and we had a couple of iced coffees there whilst checking emails and catching up with friends and family. After spending some time there, it had gotten late and we didn't want to have to cook dinner back at the campervan, so we went for a curry at a lovely Indian restaurant in the town centre. The food was excellent - we had poppadums to start, with several different chutneys, and then we shared a chicken korma curry and chicken jalfrezi curry. At the time, we had no idea that it was possible to order a curry with a deep-fried scorpion served on top (we found out later when reading a Rotorua newspaper); if we had known, we may have decided to give that a go since we hadn't been too adventurous during our time in Asia in the first half of the year.

It had started raining while we were eating dinner and we walked back in it, but it was only a slight drizzle. That was probably one of the first times we started saying that we were looking forward to returning to London after our trip ended on 2nd January. The climate was cooler in New Zealand, much cooler than any other place we had been during 2007, and it felt like we were walking around back home. The truth was that it was actually colder in London at the time, because everyone there was experiencing late autumn weather and we were experiencing the end of a New Zealand spring season. When we made it back to the Top 10, we were both pretty tired and we went to bed.

When morning came, we were still pretty exhausted and decided to sleep in as late as possible. We woke up close to noon and ate breakfast before leaving to visit Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, which was located 27km south on the Thermal Explorer Highway (highway 5). Wai-O-Tapu was the Maori name given to the large area of unique volcanic natural wonders. Wai-O-Tapu means "Sacred Waters" in Maori, which is the native language to the indigenous people of New Zealand. The area was New Zealand's most colourful and diverse volcanic area, and we were amazed at the variety of natural displays within the park. The walks through the park took us on a journey through stunning hydrothermal activity and unforgettable vistas, just like the brochure said we would experience.

With every pool, lake, crater, steam vent or mineral terrace, or even the tracks that we walked on, we found innumerable colours of every tint and hue. The Artist's Palette was the largest area, a mixture of hot and cold pools, and steaming, hissing fumaroles with a variety of ever-changing colours. One part of the Artist's Palette was the Champagne Pool, which was unique in the world, a fifth of a hectare of bubbling, hissing water, with a beautiful ochre-coloured petrified edge to it. Throughout the park, the water in most of the pools was extremely hot, obviously causing steam to rise, and we could feel the heat just by standing near the water's edge.

The colours we saw during our walk around Wai-O-Tapu were all natural and due to different mineral elements in the pools. Green represented colloidal sulphur or ferrous salts, orange meant that antimony was present, purple was for manganese oxide, white was caused by silica, yellow-primrose was due to sulphur, red-brown as a result of iron oxide, and black came from sulphur and carbon combinations. The smells we had to draw in through our nostrils were often of the "rotten egg" variety and were associated with the hydrogen sulphide gases that escaped from many of the pools or steam vents.

The water beneath the ground at the park was heated by magma leftover from earlier volcanic eruptions, and the water was so hot (temperatures up to 300 degrees Celsius have been recorded) that it absorbed minerals out of the rocks through which it passed, and transported them to the surface as steam where they were ultimately absorbed into the ground. The colours and smell, and resulting pools, were a result of this process, and both of us were extremely impressed.

After we left the main section of Wai-O-Tapu, where we had walked a few kilometres to visit all of the park's natural attractions, we drove to the section of mud pools, which was down the road from the visitor centre. The mud pools there were the largest in all of New Zealand, and we saw violent and spectacular displays of boiling grey mud there. It was a nice finish to an afternoon where we had seen such a variety of volcanic disruption, including the colourful hydrothermal pools, and also a dozen large craters that had been formed by eruptions, or by internal chasms.

The one main attraction that we missed that afternoon was Lady Knox Geyser, which began gushing every morning at the same time: 10:15am. The geyser reached heights up to 20 metres and would have been an impressive sight, but we would've had to return the next morning to see it. The woman that sold us the entrance ticket to Wai-O-Tapu said that we could use the ticket stub to see Lady Knox at any point in the future, and we thought we would add the attraction onto our agenda when we returned to the North Island from the South Island, as we made our way back to Auckland at the end of our month in the country. Just so you know, we ended up giving the geyser a miss at the end of the month, being too tired to do much sightseeing in the North Island when we returned a few weeks later.

Before driving the 27km back to Rotorua, we pulled over at a picnic area and had lunch next to a beautiful lake. The day had been truly gorgeous, with the sun shining and it being pretty warm outside. Therefore, we opened the side and back doors of the campervan and ate sandwiches whilst reading our books and enjoying the sunshine's warmth pouring into the vehicle. When we left an hour later, we drove back to Rotorua, stopped at a supermarket to buy some more groceries, and then headed back to Top 10 Rotorua Holiday Park so we could pull Bessie into the campervan site we had booked the day before.

For dinner that evening, we ate a couple of microwave pies, a Mexican one and another filled with mince, and some fish fingers that we cooked our the grill in our campervan. We could only use the microwave in our vehicle when we were hooked into a power site, so we decided to go ahead and consume the pies that night. The fish fingers cooked well under the grill, even though it was suggested that we used a conventional oven. We read more of our books whilst eating our meals, and then watched a DVD film afterwards before going to sleep. The next morning, we left early to drive to Waitomo to check out the eerie glowworm caves, a must-do on any New Zealand itinerary.