The Smelliest City in the World
Trip Start
Nov 28, 2007
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Trip End
Dec 14, 2007
Rotorua,
New Zealand
Friday, December 7, 2007
Ok, on to the Smelliest City in the World (so called by Chris) - Rotorua. We ended up driving there after dark through the Middle of Nowhere again. Still surrounded by sheep and farmland. We knew we were getting close, though, because the smell hit us before we ever even saw the town. Rotorua is famous for its hot springs, namely, sulphur springs, where boiling water naturally comes out of cracks in the surface. Sulphur, if you don't remember from chemistry class, has the wonderful property of smelling like rotton eggs. So the whole town smells like the bathroom after Jeffy has done his business.
Oddly, Rotorua is the first town in NZ to have sprung up on tourism. This is evidenced by numerous souvenir shops all over the downtown area. It really is a beautiful town, and I would to have liked to stay longer if it hadn't been for the smell. We spent one day perusing the shops and eating meat pies. That evening we went to the Tamaki Maori Village for a cultural encounter - a show of sorts, then the traditional Maori meal, or Hangi, which is meat and veggies cooked in a earthen pit. It was very interesting, very slightly hokey, but that was to be expected. Perhaps the best part was that Chris was elected co-chief of our bus, and so had to perform the Haka (war dance). Unfortunately, it was so dark that my photos of that particular experience came out pretty poorly.
The next day we went to a geothermal reserve called Hell's Gate, which is a pretty accurate name. The smell was stronger there, but not nearly as offensive. We walked right up to boiling lakes, boiling mud, and steam coming out of cracks in the earth. Pretty bizarre stuff. The photos we took really do look like some level of hell from Dante's Inferno.
In the end though, we really were happy to leave the odor behind and make our way to Wellington.
