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Rotorua - New Zealand
Gap Year Travel Journal

(27th - 29th May) New Zealand - Rotorua
Having hired a car, we set off east of Auckland across to the centre of North Island. Since we only had one week, we decided we would be better spending all our remaining time focussing on the volcanic region rather than spend our time driving around the country to get up the Bay of Islands as well (it was hardly beach weather after all!). As we left the city it was bleak and overcast and blowing a gale but as we neared Rotorua, the skies cleared and we had sunshine for the rest of our visit, although we had frosts each morning too. Rotorua is on the southern shore of Lake Rotorua in the main volcanic region of New Zealand and because of the cold weather you see steam oozing out of holes and cracks in the ground everywhere, the whole town has a strong smell of sulphur! It is the strangest of sights – it looks like the town is on fire sometimes. The whole region is a bubbling cauldren of boiling water, bubbling mud and hissing steam and the bad egg smell of hydrogen sulphide is ever-present. We went to several geo-thermal parks where we got to see how the Maoris use the naturally heated to cook with and for bathing.We saw huge geysers (they call them guy-zers but it's much funnier to say gee-zer like we do, especially when one of them is named the Diamond Geyser! Well it made us laugh anyway!). We have seen craters galore with hot water springs and boiling lakes. They have huge terraces of silica that are like giant glaciers creeping along as they get bigger and very beautiful colours too. And yes, we went for a mud bath. The mud is so fine and smooth but quite smelly. After twenty minutes baking our face and body packs on we had a cold shower and then hopped into the heated spa pools to relax. It was a great experience but our skin stank for several days and it turned our jewellery black when we put it back on afterwards! We also stayed in a motel here that had a bubbling hot tub in each room and we made the most of that too. We went up one mountain by cable car and then came back down it three times by luge, each time taking a more advanced course – plenty of screaming and yeehaa-ing going on. We went to see some endangered Kiwis (the bird not the locals!) and also went to a Maori Dance Night – great music and much more harmonious singing than the aboriginal music. Jo ended up on stage being taught how to twirl some balls on the end of pieces of string, while Mike buried his head in his camera when the men came looking for guys to perform the Haka!

Want more info on the area? Click this brilliant website: http://www.rotoruanz.com/rotorua/