After an evening at the pub with friends, we came back to the hotel and hit the sack. The next morning dawned bright and warm, almost shorts weather but not quite. After we had breakfast we set out to explore Rotorua. This town is famous for its thermal activity, there are many spas charging an arm and a leg just to walk around them and see the steam vents and pools (it cost two arms, two legs and an eye to actually use the spa). A quick search on the internet showed that there is a park downtown that has many mud pools, steam vents and hot pools all free to view, so that’s where we went.
The picture above, in my mind, looks very much like a black and white picture taken from an aeroplane flying over fields and a lake. In fact it is just the way the mud from small eruptions has dried.
In fact just driving around there was evidence of steam along the road and in people’s back yard.
Also in the park was a great climbing structure for kids, a lawyers dream given the lack of protection!
Many businesses now tap into the abundance of hot water below the surface. The water is not used directly, but it is used to heat regular water via a heat exchanger. The motel we are staying at was a pioneer in this field, and today it keeps a hot tub at 50C, a pool at 36C and each room has a private outdoor plunge pool (think small hot tub without the jets) that can be filled with hot water, all incurring no heating charges.
With all this activity comes a down side, smell! There is a background smell of sulphur throughout the town, which intensifies closer to the source of the thermal activity, it didn’t seem to be too bad, but after an hour or two I did begin to feel a little unwell!
Next stop was a Maori village, this was an area where Maoris still lived, but they mostly live in modern houses now. There were some traditional Mari houses there, together with an old church that had been built in the Maori way. The parking lot was interlocking paving, and there was evidence of hot water and steam coming through the cracks. At one point there was some surface water and I decided to test the temperature, it was HOT to the point of scalding the finger.
Although we had not planned to be with our friends during the day, we met up with them at both of the above locations!
After the village it was onto Government gardens. This was an area of land signed over to the Government, by the Maoris some years ago as a present. The original swamp land was turned into some very picturesque gardens and lawn bowling greens. There is also a large mansion there built in the Tudor style.
We went back to the motel for a quick dip in the hot tub and a swim in the pool before heading over to our friends motel for a quick beer visit. By now it was officially shorts weather with temperature at 24C
In the evening we met up with them (planned this time) to go to a Hangi, this is a traditional Maori meal, together with a tour of a rebuilt Maori settlement. We started off in the main dining area where the MC for the evening was identifying all the groups present by nationality. There were 20 different countries present and he greeted each one in their native language. Not just a quick hello, but a quick conversation! It was really impressive that he could do this, I was even more impressed when someone identified themselves as Welsh, I thought this would stump him, but no, he had a quick conversation with them. After the introductions, we headed off to an area where parts of the village had been reconstructed, and we were given a show of local traditions, singing, dancing and fighting.
The pictures didn’t come out as well as expected due the lighting conditions. Time for a new camera (PLEASE don’t tell Lyn).
The show was excellent, we then returned for food, which had been cooked in the traditional manner; over hot rocks buried in the ground. The hot food consisted of lamb, chicken, potatoes, sweet potatoes and as a concession to the Brits, stuffing to go with the chicken. The food was great.
After dinner we headed off down to the river valley to see glow worms. So far we had missed out on these at other places, but tonight we saw them in the forest. They are very similar to fireflies, but they don’t move!
This was the end of a very worthwhile tour
November 2nd
OK, finished playing catch up. This morning it was a little cooler and overcast. We left Rotorua and the sulfurous fumes behind us en-route to Whitianga (pronounced Fitianga, in Maori wh… is pronounced similar to ph…, amazingly the TomTom GPS knows this and pronounces places correctly).
We seem to have moved from the land of sheep to the land of cows, but they still present a road hazard.
We passed through the town of KatiKati, which is renowned for the murals painted on the sides of buildings. As of today it is also in my good books for the apple cinnamon fresh cream donuts they make. I hope the scales are broken when we get home.
As we got closer to destination we noticed an increase in old cars as well as modified street cars. Meeting with “different” seems to be getting a habit. As we entered the town we saw that there was a hot rod car meeting on this week-end. That also explains why there was a shortage of rooms, the prices were higher and the fact we finished up in a disabled room. Apart from the kitchen counters being lower the room is great, and as tonight is Friday / Fish and Chip night it makes no difference.
With over a thousand words this is probably the longest single post yet. There are bound to be spelling and grammatical errors! That’s Life!!!!