Day 17 - Rotorua

Happy New Year. Woke up on the first day of the new year and pulled back the curtains to see what the day would be like. There was blue sky showing through the scattered clouds, so it looked like it was going to be a good day. Mazz then opened the sliding door and stepped outside to see how warm it was. - Phew!, the overpowering smell of Rotorua came wafting into the room, a sulphorous, rotten egg kind of smell. The smell is pretty overpowering at first, but after a while you get used to it and hardly notice it any more.

After breakfast, first stop of the day was "Wai-O-Tapu"(Wai-O-Tapu means "Sacred Waters") , a geothermal scenic reserve that is full of collapsed craters, geysers and boiling mud pools. We arrived just in time to see the Lady Knox geyser errupt. When coldwater mixes with with superheated steam caused by volcanic activity, it causes the geyser to errupt in a spectacular water and steam explosion. Normally this would happen every 2-3 days, but at 10:15 everyday the park triggers an erruption of the geyser. The Lady Knox geyser erruption lasted for about 2 minutes and reached a height of apout 8 meters. After the geyser, we then followed the walking track through the park, a trail of about 3km that took about an hour an a half. Along the way we saw plenty of bubbling mud pools, and steaming lakes of mutiple colours.

 Some of the minerals in the earth react with the hot water and steam to form colours. Last stop was a large Mud pool which was located outside of the park. The mud pool was about 30 metres in Diameter, and full of bubbles, steam and small eruption all accompanied by the same "interesting" sulphurous smell!.

After Wai-O-Tapu we headed back into Rotorua and made our way to a Redwood forest, just outside of town. There are many walking tracks through the forest, ranging from 30 minutes to 8 hours. We decided to take one of the shorter trails and headed off. The trees are Californian Redwoods, and were planted in 1901. They can grow to a height over 100m. The wood is not especially good however, as the trees grow so quickly that they wood is soft. The walk was especially interesting because the forest canopy is quite high, and even the ferns are high, having to reach up to get any light. Down on the forest floor however, it is quite open and easy to walk though.

Following the Redwoods, we headed back into town to a park famous for its thermal activity. In the park there were about 20 small pools, all fenced off and all bubbling and steaming away. There was a sign informing everyone to not touch the touch the water as it is 100 deg C, so we thought we had better leave them alone. Next stop we went back into town and wandered amongst the shops, but being New Years day most of the shops were closed, so we decided to head back to the Motel

Day 16 - Wellington to Rotorua

Today we head to Rotorua. We have really enjoyed staying in City Life Motel. Having a TV in the main bedroom and 2 separate bathrooms has given us all a little extra space, as it can get a bit crowded when we are all together in a small area. A casual start to our morning, getting packed and having breaky. We were on the road by 9:30am with our longest drive ahead of us. We were looking forward to a nice straight road and a motorway-get quicker to our destination than we have on the South Island. We were wrong! No 3 lane highway, but instead a single lane road with slow lanes for overtaking and you can only drive 100km here. There were so many towns along the way and we had to slow down to 50km in every single one of them. Mazz was very surprised to see in a small town a whole heap of seconds shops and a DFO! She managed to hold herself back and let Paul continue to drive. The drive wasn't as spectacular as the South Island but it definitely looks like the land where Hobbits would live- beautiful green rolling hills. We stopped in a town called Taihape which was pretty much a one street town but had a Subway, McDonalds and a KFC. We haven't had much luck with bakeries here- they don't know what a real cinnamon donut is. We did find one in a bakery and they called it a round donut! Aren't donuts round???? Once we all chose what to have for lunch we continued on our journey. 

The landscape began to change after awhile as we were heading on the Volcanic Loop Highway. In the distance we could see Mt Ruapehu, which is an active volcano and is the North Island's major ski fields. Mt Ruapehu is the largest active volcano in New Zealand. It has three major peaks: Tahurangi (2797m), Te Heuheu (2755m) and Paretetaitonga (2751m). The deep active crater is between these peaks and fills with a lake between major eruptions. The last time is erupted was in 2007. And of course some scenes from Lord of the Rings were filmed on the slopes- Mount Doom (Mt Ruapehu) is in Mordo! We were very surprised to still see snow on top of the volcano. Very spectacular! 

We then drove passed Lake Taupo. It is a huge lake which has a perimeter of aprrox 193km. It is a very busy place and can attract over 1.2 billion visitors over the Christmas and New Years period. 

We finally arrived into Rotorua after a 5 hour journey. Our hotel is on the outskirts of the town and is ok- it has all it needs. There is a New Years Eve party in town near Lake Rotorua called GLO party. We decide not to join the rest of the crowd and just have a yummy steak and salad for dinner. It can get quiet tiring driving for hours, so its an early night for us and cross fingers we will get nice weather while we are here, although the forecast is for rain in the afternoon.