Novotel Royal Lakeside Rotorua

Very special city. You absolutely must see. I was a Te Puia to se geysers and maori show. But the best thing it's the Matariki Hangi and concert show near the Novotel. Very good hotel.

DAY 26 It's Monday so it must be our day to fly to Rotarua - home of hot springs, geysers, etc. I'm not particularly looking forward to this bit of the trip as both Kay and Sharon have said one day was enough as it's very commercialized and pretty smelly! Traveling here is very different; if you ask anyone how far to anywhere they always respond with a time rather than a mileage so when we asked the time to Christchurch we were told to leave three hours for the journey. The host of the B&...

We left Auckland pretty early.  While we did get a decent view of the water from our hotel and the highway, we really didn't get to see or do anything else in the city.  I hadn't slept very well the night before, so I passed out in the van.  I awoke for "morning tea," which for me was a pretty good raspberry white chocolate blondie-pie thing.  It wasn't quite a pie, but was too tight/compressed to be a crumble.  I don't think anybody actually got tea. We got back in the van to finish the trip...

We got on our bus in the morning and headed towards the stink.  To be honest, I don't actually mind the smell of sulfur, despite disliking the way egg yellows taste.  Our tour guide, Cousin Ben, was extremely knowledgeable.  He is a Maori local and so has lots of connections with the area and the people in it. At our first stop was the mud pool area near Wai o tapu.  Here, the ground was wet and muddy.  The difference between this mud and the mud at home though, was that this mud was boiling....