Te Puia

I started my first day in Rotorua with a great breakfast in the café next to my hostel while waiting for my laundry that I had put into the washing machine of the laundromat next door (doing laundry was necessary, I can tell you :)). I am going to have a longer stay here in Rotorua (until Sunday). I am going to do some organised tours from here. After having gotten the better part of it organised in the visitor centre, I went out to wander around a bit in the Government Gardens of Rotorua - a beautiful park, gifted by a Maori chief to the public in the second half of the 19th century, with the amazing building of the Rotorua Museum at one end of it. There was also free tour around the gardens provided by a volunteer of the museum (the museum itself is closed for making it earthquake-safe). The tour was pretty interesting giving a lot of information about the area and how the geothermal activity of the region was used for healing purposes. At 4:00 pm I was picked up to go to Te Puia ("The springs"). Te Puia belongs to a Maori tribe and is the heart of the geothermal activity of the region - Magma is only two kilometers below the surface😧. In Te Puia they also have a Maori village, a school and workshop for Maori handcraft and a Kiwi Conservation Centre. Yes, I saw my first kiwi, but only in the Conservation Centre🙃 There was a guided tour through the workshop a well as the Conservation Centre and the geothermal area. Unfortunately, we did not see the Pohutu geyser (the tallest in the southern hemisphere) erupting, but the landscape is gorgeous (of course reminding me of Iceland😄). After the tour we received a Maori welcoming and cultural ceremony - very interesting - and then a Maori dinner with parts of it cooked in a traditional way under the surface. Honestly, I was a bit disappointed of the dinner. It was more like a "mass feeding" in a modern buffet restaurant; with way more than a hundred participants it is probably not possible in a different way. It all tasted well, but the atmosphere was not really welcoming. What I enjoyed then very much again was another walk to the geyser during twilight. You cannot imagine the beauty and atmosphere! It would have been nice, though, to have more than 15 minutes to walk around.Read more