Day 6: Rotorua

After a glorious al fresco sandwich buffet that made us the envy of the rest stop, we drove down to Matamata to drop off several people for their Hobbiton tour. Although the pineapple at lunch was tasty, there's always room for ice cream! Sam took us to One Road Ice Cream Company in Tirau, a handmade ice cream shop with a friendly owner that takes a lot of pride in his delicious ice cream & sorbet (I had the passion fruit).
Tirau was also our introduction to the quirk of "big things". Small towns in NZ who want to increase tourist traffic build big things to pull them in. Tirau has a big herding dog & sheep. In my opinion, totally worth the stop.

We had several options for activities in the afternoon. Even though Rotorua is the birthplace of zorbing, I didn’t quite have the desire to put my body through the abuse of sloshing around inside a human hamster ball. And based on Gordy & Jaimie’s video of their experience, I also wasn’t ready to get quite that intimate with my tour mates. 😊 Instead, I opted for the Skyline luge track. Marty (from TX) joined me, and we had fun getting to know each other better between sled rides down the mountain. I especially enjoyed the “scenic” track that took you past a mid-hill event space where guests could luge in and park their sleds to join the party. We hurried through our luging to make sure we had enough time to visit the Volcanic Hills Winery tasting room at the top of the gondola. Brent, the wine maker, was very chatty (to the point where we were afraid we would miss our bus). But, I did learn he worked for several years at a vineyard in the Willamette Valley – small world.

We did make the local bus into Rotorua to meet back up with the Flying Kiwi at the iSite, and we had just enough time to take a quick stroll to the lakeside park to see some of the geothermal vents that were responsible for the rotten egg, sulphur smell permeating the town.Read more