Rotorua

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Trip Start Feb 25, 2008 Previous
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  Rotorua, New Zealand
Saturday, March 1, 2008

Blimey, what a busy day lay ahead.

We started with a chat with Daria, the 11th Ave Motel owner, about moving ove here, they have been here 10 years.  We chatted for abot 20 mins, about loads fo stuff, including what to bring with us, ie a big fridge as they are quite dear here.  Daria was able to give us some good info on the schooling system here and is a good contact for house rentals when we need one when we first come over.
We got out of Tauranga a lot easier than we got in, as we know the place quite well now, and were soon on the way to Rotorua, the tourist capital of the North island, and the Thermal centre of New Zealand.

Again the journey was spectacular, loads of Mountains, forests and gorges to go through.  But unfortunately, we had drizzle, mist and heavier rain so the views weren't as good as they should have been.

We entered the town and immediately came across the park where Billy connolly had done a piece for his TV programme.  So we stopped off for a look around, and yes, it did smell really bad in places, but not too bad most of the time.  There were pools of boiling mud belching stinky steam into the air.  there were a couple of pools that you could paddle in, but they were a bit too hot to stay in them for any length of time.  We got pretty wet walking around but was well worth it.
We headed through town and found the Rotorua Golf Club I had wanted to visit, due to it's other name, Arikikipakapa Golf Club, great name !
From there we headed south out of town to Wai-o-Tapu thermal park, www.geyserland.co.nz
This was a fantastic place, It was like Jurassic Park, going in through a winding track through giant ferns then onto plateau's with craters spitting out mud and steam.  the park was very impressive, a great marked out walk around all the craters and lakes leading to all the best view points, it was like you would imagine the earth to be millions of years ago.

When you guys come out to visit us next year, you definately need to come and see this place..

Thermal activity

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Wai-o-Tapu

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