Rotorua

Rotorua City

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We arrived in Rotorua at around 3.30pm after another pleasant coach ride. The first thing that struck us on arrival to this city was the lack of any building of more than three stories, in no way did it look like a city in the normal sense of the word. The second thing we noticed was the smell! Rotorua lies in the middle of an area with plentiful geothermal activity, this basically means that the whole place has the whiff of eggs about.

After checking into our hostel. We strolled through Kuirau Park, which has many bubbling mud pools and a large steaming lake. The park is right next to the city centre and it is very strange to see volcanic activity so close to a city's main shopping street. We walked along the banks of Lake Rotorua before grabbing some food, the city turned into something of a ghost town in the evening so we decided to get an early night.

Kuirau Park.

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We rose early the next morning and headed to the north edge of Rotorua to the Skyline complex. A gondola (cable-car) took us up the side of Mount Ngongtoha (no idea how to pronounce that) where we had a great view of the city and lake. Whilst there we tried Luging, not the winter olympics sport, but instead more of free-wheeling downhill go-kart, which were great. Having tried all of the three tracks down the hillside, we headed to the south of the city to Te Puia, an area of major geothermal activity. The main attraction here being the Pohutu geyser, which sprayed hot water more than twenty metres into the air roughly once an hour. Te Puia was a weird place, and we spent much of the afternoon exploring the mud-pools and steaming lakes.

Rotorua is certainly one of the most unique places we have visited. It feels in places like it is on a different world. It would be a good place to return to in the future, but I would never want to stay for too long. There are only so many mornings that you can wake up to the smell of rotten eggs!

Down a hill in a Luge!

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J