Rotorua
Trip Start
May 07, 2008
1
60
90
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
Rotorua,
North Island,
New Zealand
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Well we got to Rotorua in the afternoon. Rotorua is the most popular of NZ's thermal regions. This doesn't really hit you until you park up, get out of the car and get slapped in the face by the stench of rotten eggs. (David: Great for hiding deadly farts! (Lois: Yes!)) After a while, you get used to it. You have to. (David: Unlike farts.(Lois: yes, husbandy farts indeed!)) Maori consider Rotorua as sacred and so a third of Maori's live here. Rotorua is also popular though for adventure sports. Like Queensland.
On the way to Rotorua, we stopped by in Taupo and visited Huka Falls. This is a magnificent waterfall which rushes down the Waikato River. The waterfall drop is 11 metres and is absolutely stunning. (David: The stunning bit is that it drops that 11 metres whizzing through a narrow gorge
Our private eggy pool
. The pictures explain it better.)Next, we went to Craters of the Moon. This is a 50,000 metre square geothermal field. Before you lies the vast stretch of arid land with stenching steaming holes of sulphur bubbling up. The ground can be boiling hot so there are special boarded walkways and viewpoints. It's fascinating. Sometimes the ground was really soft and bouncy underfoot by particular steaming vents so it was quite unnerving: perhaps this ground was ripe for collapsing at any time as a result of the boiling temperatures....so we quickly moved on...especially as the soft and bouncy ground was right on the rim of the steaming vents! It was all very beautiful sight though.
So, we found a Motel quite promptly, very centrally located. We were greeted almost immediately by Asterix who was exceptionally spasmodic at receiving cuddles, tickles and rolled over, legs in the air, panting for more hand action on his tummy!! Dirty beast! The owners were also very nice!! Actually, they were lovely! (David: And for those paying attention, Lois wins the grand prize for uttering the word 'lovely' one million times! (Lois: you write this flaming blog then!) (David: Lovely!)) The woman could talk for England. (David: Or New Zealand) When we mentioned that we had never been to Rotorua before and that we were travelling around NZ, that opened up a whole can of worms and so came forth a whole Duracell battery verbal stream of advice, tips, suggestions for places, things to eat, do, people to see without a pause for breath
Waikato River
! She was fantastic but it was a bit information overload!Our room was great. As Rotorua is famous for its hot springs, so this was incorporated into the rooms. Not the smell but the idea of the sulphur pools, that is! Next to our very small bathroom was a large window from ceiling to just above the floor. Climbing non-ladylike out of this window brought you into a very enclosed outdoor stone paved pool. The pool was only about 2 metre sq! But there was a big long pipe coming down the wall with attached taps. The idea is that you fill this small outside area with hot water and bathe in it like you would a hot spa pool. It was actually very very luxurious and decadent. And because it was so enclosed with high walls to protect your privacy, it could potentially be quite sexy. However, it wasn't really working for me as you had to first swish out any insect corpses down the drain and then you would likely bathe with tiny fragments of paint that had peeled off from the walls with the heat of the water! (P45 for whoever came up with this décor idea!) if that wasn't bad enough, the floor of the pool was nicely laid with flagstones but these were incredibly sharp on your knees (as you crawled from the back wall to the hot tap I would like to point out!) let along your naked bottom. AND not wanting to completely trash this whole sulphur pool idea, bathing in it by day was ok and at night would have been very romantic with a nice G & T and some candles if you weren't liable to being eaten down to your skeleton by mosquitos. So all in all, excellent idea, crap design. It could be something really fabulous if it was properly thought out. How about some proper outdoor tiles perhaps?? You never know...they might catch on..!
The next day, David and I ventured out to the Buried Village
Huka Falls on River
. Te Wairoa was a small community in 1886. Then Mount Tarawera erupted. Spewing boiling and bubbling mud, rocks and ash all over the whole village, drowning, crushing and ultimately killing over 150 people, demolishing homes and hotels and turning the once picturesque community into a mudslide and waste land forever more.The result, apart from devastation, is of several remaining homes, literally buried halfway down in mud which you can visit and read about the traumatic event in a museum. It's an absolutely beautiful place and to see the last few 1-storey homes remaining, standing at odd angles half in the ground is quite alarming. You can go inside the homes and there are tree roots growing under the roof. We walked around the grounds. There was a dead straight line of sky-reaching trees with an information board next to it. Apparently and completely astonishingly, these line of trees grew from wooden fence posts!!!!!!!!!! They just sprouted up from the posts!! (David: Now we know this can happen, we've seen them all over the place. Lois: well, the trees don't actually advertise the fact that they once used to be a fence post, "Hey! I used to be a stump" but you can guess at their origins I suppose. (David: The single line of trees marching across the landscape is the main giveaway))
We walked by the gorgeous, little trickling river with water as clear as crystal, and down through the overgrown forest
Craters of the Moon
. We got to the waterfall. A great giant of crashing water, thundering down before us. To the side of us was a backdrop of Rotorua with hazy hills and the calm glistening lake, like a watercolour. Stunning. That night, we went to Te Puia. Te Puia means geyser or volcano in Maori. Te Puia is a cultural place where you can go to nearby Whakarewarewa Thermal Valley and see the geysers shoot their sulphur up in a beautiful fountain, observe Maori traditions and eat and drink and get merry. Great fun. We were greeted by a Maori who sat us down and explained what the evening would entail. Then a 'chief' was chosen from our large congregation. Everyone looked shifty. But one brave man put his hand up: a German guy called Hans. We all breathed a sigh of relief and stopped staring at our feet!
Maori and Hans led our congregation to a nearby hut where we would observe traditional song and dance. We watched as Hans had to introduce himself, in typical Maori fashion of course, to another Maori leader who, along with his tribesmen, were not wearing very much at all. But did lots of Ooo and Ahhh and Uggg noises with warpaint on and leaves in their hair. (David: A Maori 'hello' is pretty fearsome, it's not surprising a few got shot when early explorers first encountered them
Read it for yourself!
. After all, if you're going to have a 'first contact' policy, it's probably a good idea to take out the bits where you're waggling a spear, shouting loudly and sticking out your tongue.) Then we had to take our shoes off before entering the hut where we all sat down in rows of chairs before a platform. Hans then had to stand up and introduce himself to a different leader on stage, in front of all of us. I thought he would just say something like, "I am Hans and I come from Germany and I thank you for this wonderful evening of food and music" but he went on for ages, talking about his country "we have snow, sometimes" and suchlike. He was absolutely brilliant. I don't know if our Maori leader briefed him at all, but Hans was extremely confident. I would have drowned in my own nervous sweat!! Then, we watched a Maori show which was great with Maori women...not wearing much...and the Maori men making music on sticks and leaves and banging drums and doing lots of Ugg noises. Really good! Then men and women were picked from the audience to practice Maori customs on stage before us all. Very funny. Bit like a cheap Spanish Cabaret show where the tour reps are the entertainment. After this, we all went for dinner. Dinner was included in the ticket and none of us were expecting quite such a feast! We all had to share tables and get to know one another which was ok. On our table was a party of 4 from Scotland who were loud and friendly (but we didn't get to talk to them because they were on the other side of the table), a couple from Germany who didn't talk to any of us and another couple from Australia
Steaming sulphur pool
. The husband used to be in the army and he had a great sense of humour. The wife was very friendly too but she was boss! As usual!! The food was delicious. It was a combination of a buffet and traditionally cooked food, which is cooked in the steam from the thermal pools. Starters consisted of two types of soup, mussels, oysters, prawns, salads, meats, vegetables...and mains included more fish, lamb, vegetables. Dessert consisted of fruit, ice cream, chocolate cake, strawberry cake, cream cake, coffees, it was incredible!!! Drinks were extra.After this, and all feeling a bit merry, we all climbed aboard a tram-train (a long connected trail of small short trams) to the nearby geyser. It was cold and dark but the geyser was erupting into a tall spewing fountain of beautiful steaming hot sulphur. Absolutely stunning display. If you had enough of photographing it from every angle, then you could sit down for a while on the concrete steps that were very warm from the sulphur underground. As everyone got the same idea, then our Maori leader invited us all to go and get a hot chocolate and then he gathered us all around on the hot steps as he told us a story under the stars with the peppermint green geyser spewing in the background.
It was such a fantastic night
Smelly pool!
. Really great fun and such good value for money bearing in mind you could eat all you liked - and oysters are not cheap!!The next day we checked out, after a verbal ear bashing on where to go, what to do, how to do it, what to eat, where to eat it, where to visit, how to get there etc etc by the female owner. And Asterix allowed me to give him a great goodbye tummy rub (David: That wasn't Asterix, or his tummy!) before we got into our car and got back on the road.
Our next destination was Gisbon, via an unsealed road.
Love, us xxx
