Rotorua

Just south of Hobbiton is the slightly large and more human sized Rotorua, nestled up against a lake in the Bay of Plenty. Unfortunately for us the only thing we saw plenty of was rain. It has rained constantly for the last 48 hours 😢.

Rotorua is a town built on top of the Pacific Rim of Fire and has lots of Geothermal activity, from bubbling mud pools in the local park to streams of boiling water running alongside the stunning lake of the same name. As we arrived in town the rain let up slightly so we headed for the Polynesia Spa, a set of natural pools of various temperatures and acidity, meant to relax and heal a variety of ailments. It was very relaxing, although the cold plunge pool was a bit much, and the smell of egg followed us for a long time! The rain held off for most of the evening so we were able to head into the centre and treat ourselves to a cooked meal (cooked by someone else for a change) As the rain started up again we headed for our campsite to hunker down for the night. It absolutely hammered it down all night!

The next day we had planned to do a tour of the towns historic Maori site and the best of the Geothermal activities including their Geyser that goes off multiple times a day. The weather had other ideas. Being in a van is not ideal when it's raining as there is no where to derobe and dry clothes. We managed to catch a break in the rain for an hour or so to explore the Gardens in town and see some of the bubbling mud pools before the heavens opened again and we had to head back to camp. Unfortunately we have to move on the next day so we will have to miss some of the highlights from what we assume is a cute little town.

Our first bad luck with weather but we have seen on the news that there is a lot of dangerous flooding up in Auckland and the Coromandel Peninsula, lots of road closures caused by landslides and they had to close the airport for 36 hours, so we are lucky we got to explore the North and avoid the worst of it.

Looking for activities out of the rain, we found an opportunity to see some kiwi up close in a Kiwi Hatchery. No... we're not talking about the fruit 🥝 but about the bird! Unfortunately we were not allowed to take pictures so we stole some off their website to give you an idea. We learned a lot of interesting facts about the kiwi like that it is the bird with the shortest beak and it has a belly button! This bird is nocturnal so it is almost impossible to see them in the wild and also because their numbers are quite low. This hatchery helps repopulating the kiwis by taking the eggs in the wild (who only have a 5% rate to become an adult) hatch them, and when they are about 1kg release them in the wild again. That means that we had also the opportunity to see some eggs and some babies! Some that were not older than a week!Read more