Day 8: Whitianga to Rotorua

Today we were scheduled to travel to Rotorua where we will be staying for the next four nights. After seeing a news post early this morning talking about flooded roads near Coromandel, we decided to get an earlier than planned start to the day, to avoid getting stuck on the road anywhere. We hit the road before 9am and made the almost four hour journey with only a little rain and no significant delays.

Our early start saw us arrive in a dry and even a bit sunny Rotorua before 1pm. We were early enough to have time to check out one of the local attractions and we chose to go Zorbing - rolling down a hill in a giant inflated ball, and then driving back up to the top and doing it again. In Cormac's case he did it four times all up! It was a little bit terrifying and a lot of fun, and very wet. Also cold when you get out of the ball. So the hot tubs at the bottom are very welcome.

Seems we made a good decision to do the zorbing today, as they told us that the place is going to be closed tomorrow because of the cyclone. This whole area we are in has gone to red alert for dangerous winds from 4am Sunday, so I assume other places will also close and it might be a quiet one for us.

After the zorbing we had a bit of a drive around town and checked out a couple of lake-side viewpoints, before stopping yet again at Woolies for food for dinner. Then it was back to our motel to settle in for the night, and potentially the next day or two. We are not particularly concerned about the weather but have taken the small precaution of filling some empty bottles with water, just in case....Read more