North Island Condos Reviews and Rates

4th Day: hot springs...thank you Olivier

Really early in the next morning we drove from Rotorua to the Rainbow Mountain to make a small track for about 2 or 3 hours.
We had a amazing view over the whole area and we decided to have lunch on top of the mountain. There we met a nice guy from the Southern Island with his family and we talked for quite a while.
Because we wanted to …

Smelly town with hot springs and geysirs

Rotorua is a funny little town with an exceptional smell coming from the hot springs. 3km below the surface is a lava stream and so Rotorua is based on a geothermal wonderland with mud pools, geysirs and many hot springs. The Maoris use them for cooking, bathing, washing and built some villages around Rotorua.

when you have a wander around …

North Country Girl (The Charlatans)

To get to New Zealand (and this may make your brain hurt a bit) we took a 3 & a half hour flight but because we crossed the international date line we landed 28 and a half hours after taking off. In other words we were totally robbed of December 1st 2010, which also happens to be (much to Ian's wallet's' relief) our anniversary.

Wales v Australia and a cooked breakfast = heaven

I arrived in to Rotorua on the afternoon of November 6th. It was a long drive from Whitianga so we had quite a few stops to break it up. Our first stop was at Karangahake Scenic Reserve for a bush walk along a gorge. We followed the river and crossed over two swing bridges to enter a one kilometre long railway tunnel. We walked through the …

Rotorua

This place stinks!! Due to the huge amounts of thermal activity in the area, large clouds of Sulphur float all over the place. Zoe felt sick most of the time we were there and our clothes still smell of the stuff.

Walked around Kuirau park on the first afternoon (free) with a couple of bubbling mud pools and other stinky stuff.

Kia Ora

Kia Ora! It means hello, thank you in Maori language. It is such a pretty language, I would like to learn it. Also here they say "Sweet As", sounds like they say sweet ass! It just means awesome. I arrived in Auckland well and went to my hostel. The next day I was not sure I would be leaving on my bus so I got up at 7am anyway, and found out that I …

Smells like rotten eggs

i drove to rotaroua via Wai-o-tapu a thermal area with a geyser that explodes at 10.15 daily so i stopped to see the geyser and then walked around the multi coloured pools of green ornage yellow and purple and to see the boiling mud. in the afternoon i walked by rotorua lake and in the evening i went to a maori culteral evening with a hangi meal, a …

Rotorua - Day 4 and 5

Here we are again with the day 4 and 5 activities in Rotorua! On day 4 we had a bit of a sleep in and a lazy morning (due mostly to my sore muscles from the carrying the raft) but the afternoon saw us into some more action with Jonathan and I on the Sky Swing followed by more water action with Zorbing. I'll let the picture tell the story. We had …

This place bloody stinks!

We left wellington and headed fro rotorua, a journey that took about 4 hours in total. On the way we called i at a place caleld taupo to watch mad people doing the iron man comp, (4 km swim, 400 m run, 180km bike ride, then a marathon!). We only stopped breifly, and it was raining. Vern got out to take photos, and then some woman ran over saying we …

Egg but no bacon...

So we got to Roturua - the centre of the North Island. A literal melting pot of steaming geysers, fumoroles, bubbling boiling mud holes and sulphorous activity and you could smell its bad egginess from miles away. It has been described as 'hell on earth' cos of the obvious imagery it evokes, but it is a magnificant place to see all sorts of boiling …