Rotorua

The first thing you notice as you get off the plain is the smell. The region has very high levels of geothermal activity, giving off hydrogen sulphide with the distinctive rotten eggs smell. Fortunately there is enough to see and do in the area to make it worth putting up with the odour.

Rotorua has gained the affectionate nickname 'Roto-vegas' because of the range of tourist sights and activities it offers. The geothermal activity provides mud pools, natural spas and geysers. The area also has some of the strongest, and most tourist-friendly, Māori cultural history and plenty of outdoor activities. With a long weekend to fill my plan was to fit as much as possible into my three days.

After checking into my room at a backpackers, I set out on a walk around town. The geothermal pools of hot bubbling mud are dotted all around the town, particularly in the main park. It's a surreal site to have primordial bubbling and steaming pools right beside shops and offices. The town has built up around the South-West corner of Lake Rotorua, which provides a tranquil setting, periodically interrupted by the passengers of a jet boat doing spins across the smooth surface. After the park, I checked out the original Māori settlement of Ohinemutu, which the rest of the town has grown up around.

Spot the office buildings behind this steaming lake

Mud pool in the centre of town

Traditional carved meeting house in Ohinemutu

My next stop was the Rotorua Museum. I'd heard good things from Helen and Harry. The Museum is housed in the original Bath House, dating from the first marketing of the mineral rich water as a health treatment. The building sits in Government Gardens, filled with perfectly manicured fields for bowls and croquet. Only two things that stopped it being the complete picture of the home counties were the glorious weather and the mud pools in quieter corners of the gardens. The museum contained well presented exhibitions on Te Arawa, the local Māori iwi, the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886, the Māori Battalion in WW2 and the history of the bath house themselves. This final topic included the chance to tour the basement of the building and see the pipes that brought hot mud and water from the springs into the baths.

Oh I say...Government Gardens

Rotorua museum basement

Detail in the museum basement

In the evening I was booked to go to a hangi evening. This is a traditional Māori meal and cultural performances that are a mainstay of the tourist itinerary in Rotorua. I had ummed and ahhed about whether I was likely to enjoy this or find it a bit tacky. On balance, I'm glad I did go. A group of us from the hostel went. The evening was quite staged, but generally managed to avoid making me cringe. The 'Māori village' was near a stream and spring with significance for the Te Arawa people (or so we were told!). The evening started with a performance that showcased waiata (action songs), traditional Māori instruments and weapons and, of course, a haka. It was good to see the performers all seeming to really enjoy showing off their culture and I hope some of the money coming in through these performances goes towards reviving and maintaining aspects of the culture and language. The hangi (meal) itself was really tasty. It's cooked in the ground and consists of lots of meat, potatoes and kumara (NZ sweet potato). After dark we were taken back through the forest to see glow worms and the spring.

Dancer performing a waiata with poi

Haka, complete with drawn on moko (tattoos)

Freshly cooked hangi, yum!

The spring after dark

I was up early on my second day and headed out to the Whakarewarewa Thermal reserve. The most impressive feature of the Te Puia site is the giant 15m geyser called Pohutu ('big splash'). Unfortunately, as the day was a bit cloudy my photos don't really do justice to the arc of heated water that it sprays up into the air continuously for 15-20 minutes about once an hour. The site also has its share of hot mud pools and one pool that Māori used to use for cooking, because the water is naturally heated to boiling point.

Pohutu geyser

Cooking pool

I travelled back into town only to soon be heading back out to Whakarewarewa again, this time on a mountain bike. I'd read in the guidebook that Rotorua had the best bike trails in NZ and thought I'd give them a go. I had some trouble finding a bike shop open for long enough to be willing to rent me a bike, in the end I found one I could hire for 3 hours, which was plenty of time for me to exhaust myself. I rode the few km out to the forest and started exploring the trails. After seeing a few too many kids and families on the easy trail that I started out on, I moved up to intermediate difficulty. There were a few hairy moments and a some heavy breaking, but I managed to make my way around 4 or 5 good trails. I had barely noticed the light rain until I started on a route called 'the soakhole'. Reaching out into my path from both sides were big fern branches laden with water. While I swept through them without any trouble, I was left a lot damper than I had been moments before.

By the time I had ridden back to town and dropped my bike off and the hire shop my muscles were telling me I'd had a good workout. Predictably, Rotorua has just the cure for that in the form of a soak in a mineral spa. A couple of hours lazing in pools at different temperatures while gazing out over the lake soothed my body and gave me time for contemplation.

Day three arrived with a return of the sun and settled weather. I was relieved as I had a day's kayaking booked and we'd already had to postpone it from Sunday to Monday because of the wind. I arrived at the landing point on the edge of lake Tarawera and met my guide for the day, Jen. I was the only person on the trip, so got to set the pace for the day. It's years since I've kayaked, but it was pretty easy to get into the rhythm and I avoided capsizing. We set off across the lake, which was nearly deserted and made good time across to this hidden little beach. From there a couple of minutes walk took us to a hot pool that can only be accessed from the lake. We had a soak and good chat about life in Rotorua, adventure sports and Tae Kwon Do (Jen is about to take her blackbelt grading).

After a tasty lunch by the hot pool, we followed the coast around to a few other sites before heading back across the lake. Although the conditions were really nice there had been a section where we were paddling into the wind on the way out, somehow the wind had managed to turn around completely so we were again paddling into the wind for the final part of the return journey. That actually helped give some motivation to paddle harder and we made really good time back across the lake. In total we covered about 16km. Before I got my ride to the airport we walked a short track to a rock covered in centuries old Māori paintings.

View from the landing

Mount Tarawera (which erupted in 1886)

Jen with a map of the lake

Paddling my heart out

The day, and in fact the whole weekend, had been absolutely brilliant. I arrived back in Wellington on Monday evening amazed at how much I had managed to see and do.