Rotorua

ROTORUA BLOG. Rosemary, Sheila, Anne and I left Mission Bay this morning, 16th October, for our trip to Rotorua. We arrived here in the mid-afternoon and booked into our motel, the Birchwood Spa in Fenton Street, a very nice place (and cheap as well. It has free Internet access, too). We've been to the local supermarket to stock up on food and plonk and just at the moment we're sitting down discussing our itinerary for the next few days. As expected, the place pongs strongly of H2S and I noticed that the trollys at the supermarket were all corroded and rusty; it evidently rains dilute sulphuric acid here.

Tuesday, 17th October, at Rotorua. After breakfast, walked about half a mile up the road to Te Puia, the Maori Cultural Centre in the Whakarewarewa Valley. This is the great Rotorua sight, with boiling mud, steaming vents and geysers, including the famous one, Pohutu, which was performing nicely during our visit.

Wednesday, 18th October, at Rotorua. Up early (for us) and drove south for about 30 km to Wai-o-Tapu, another thermal region. This one really does have everything, including a terrific thermal lake called the artist's palette. Later in the afternoon we returned to Rotorua and went to the museum there, a converted Edwardian spa with good exhibits on the history of the spa, the eruption of Tarawera in 1886 (which destroyed the famous pink terraces and white terraces nearby), local Maori and local people. The museum is set in a fine garden; oh-so-English the book says, quite rightly.

Thursday, 19th October. From Rotorua we headed up to the Coromandel Peninsula and found a place to stay on Buffalo Beach, Whitianga, with the most wonderful views of the bay. By the time we'd settled-in it was too late to do much more than walk around the town, very pleasant, and go for dinner at an Italian place around the corner, also very pleasant.

Friday, 20th October. From Whitianga to Auckland, spending some time at Hot Water Beach. This is a nice enough beach in its own right, but it also has hot springs that bubble up under the sand at low-tide. People dig baths in the sand and bask in the hot water, which is sometimes much too hot. We didn't do this, but we did stand up to our knees in the sea and wriggle our feet down into the hot sand, the very hot sand in fact, a few seconds was enough at any one time. From Hot Water Beach back to Auckland by the western coastal road, just too pretty to describe.

So, a terrific trip, with some longish drives over some highly interesting roads.

Now for the pictures, not in chronological order I'm afraid, Blogger has its own ideas about where things should go. (1) Rosemary digging for hot water at Hot Water Beach; (2) Anne with her feet in hot sand at Hot Water Beach; (3) Rosemary at Rotorua; (4) Sheila, Anne and Rosemary at Rotorua; (5) Rosemary and Anne at Wai-o-Tapu; (6) The old spa museum at Rotorua; (7) The Artist's Palette hot lake at Wai-o-Tapu.

Click on the pictures to make them bigger.