Rotorua

On the way to Rotorua we stopped off at a quad biking centre to do our first quad biking of the trip. Neither of us had ever rode a quad bike so we had to have a quick lesson first to learn where the gears, accelerator and breaks were. Our instructor Karl then brought us out up through the fields on the bikes. We rode through streams, ditches, muddy forest trails and even got to chase sheep through the fields. The weather was lovely so there was a stunning view of the mountains that we climbed the day before in Tongariro National Park. We both really enjoyed the experience racing across the fields and accellerating up steep muddy hill which we may have gotten stuck in but this happened more than once for Rob so I got bragging rights.

When we eventually arrived to Rotorua we spelt the sulfuric gasses indicating the volcanic activity in the area and we understood why it has been labeled as one of the "rotten egg city".

We decide to go to the Redwood forest for the lights display that night. There was a bridge walk between the trees along with light decorations hanging from the trees. It was very pretty and quite peaceful too. We learned about how the trees were imported from California 115 years ago and grown in New Zealand. They can each grow over one hundred metres high. The following day we came back to walk through the trails of the forest. It was nice to see the forest in both the daylight and nightlight.

After doing a little bit of rafting in Queenstown I was keen to do more on this trip so I booked a rafting trip here in Rotorua. This rafting trip turned out to be much better than the previous one because we got to go down three waterfalls which was great fun. We also got to surf some waves in the raft so by the end of the trip we were very wet. I think we all just laughed the whole way down the river, the rafting was that fun.

The final thing that we wanted to do while in Rotorua was to see a Maori concert. The concert in Te Puia Maori experience involved some war dances, love songs and traditional games. At one stage they got us to come onto stage and thought us some of the dances. I was thought a dance using string bobbles as dance props while Rob was thought the haka war dance. We were not very good at the dances so it was quite funny watching each others lack of coordination. We also tried to learned some Maori chants too but couldn't pronounce any of the words well as the words are so long. We got a tour around the grounds which included the second largest geyser in the southern hemisphere however as the weather was so windy the spray just went sidewards so wasn't as impressive as the traditional pictures. There was also an arts and crafts college on the site that we were allowed to walk through and we saw students hand making the designs on all of the sculptures and jewelery, it was quite impressive.Read more