Advertisement
Published: August 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
After finding our first chioice of hostel was full we tried Hot Rocks hostel and were able to get in there. It had been a long day driving so we took it easy and had a few beers chatting with the first Irish people we have met in quite a while.
Rotorua is in the Bay of Plenty region of the North Island. It´s a big place by New Zealand standards with a population of about 65,000. It´s best known for its geothermal activity. There are numerous geysers and hot mud pools located in the city. It is nicknamed Sulphur City, and you only have to take one sniff to realise why. Our hostel had lots of thermal pools including a main swimming pool which even in Winter is roasting hot, compliments of the thermal springs underground.
The next day we drove to Whakarewarewa Thermal Village. This is a functioning Maori village deliberately built on the site of lots of thermal activity. We wandered around looking at the bubbling mud, steaming (And stinking) lakes and walked one of the nature trails.
After overdosing on the sulphur we drove to the otherside of the city to the gondola. We
Our New Home
"Bag End" - home of Frodo and Bilbo Baggins took the gondola up to the top of Mt. Ngongotaha and after getting some snaps of the city we took a luge each (With a steering handle and brakes) down to the bottom. It was great fun and we ended up going down three times. You catch a purpose built ski lift back up each time.
We hit the road, after the Gondola back down, to a place called Matamata. We were driving out of Rotorua to do a tour of the only surviving set of the Lord of The Rings films. However the film company has demanded that all props be destroyed for copyright reasons so it´s really just a shell of the place but still - bit of imagination and your a hobbit.
We got collected from Matamata and our guide explained all about how the site had been picked and the extreme secrecy surrounding the filming. Nobody in town knew that the movie was being made there and were told all the trucks and new people were part of an army exercise.
The rolling hills around the town are just as you´d imagine from the film and were obviously perfect for the movies. The
whole set layout was explained to us and we then visited the Hobbiton village itself which was pretty cool. The set was on a massive 1,200 acre farm which has thousands upon thousands of sheep.Our guide JR, was really funny and had us strike all sorts of ridiculous poses for pictures. After the tour we drove back to Rotorua after a busy day and decided to catch a movie.
The next day we drove to a pace called Hells gate about 16km from Rotorua. It was only as we parked we realised we had forgotten the camera. Cue a 30km round trip to collect it. With camera in hand we finally made it into the park. Another Geothermal park it was actually named by an Irishman - George Bernard Shaw who visited the place early in the last century.
The name is pretty apt and the mud, steam and general amount of activity was much more violent than the park the previous day. It contains the largest thermal waterfall in the Southern Hempisphere although to be fair it mustn´t have too much competition as it´s fairly small.
After Hells Gate we drove back to the city and
Kuirau Park, a public park beside our hostel which has lots of bubbling water and mud of it´s own. After driving along the lake front we drove out to the Agro-dome. They do lots of shows on livestock, and sheep shearing etc but we were only there to zorb.
Zorbing (Only in New Zealand) involves getting into a giant inflated ball and rolling down to the bottom of a large hill. You can do it all sorts of ways but we opted to zorb together and go down in a ball filled with water (well not full). After getting suited up and sliding into the zorb we awaited our detailed instructions. The guy told us to walk forward and then sealed us in. We did just that and were soon being thrown about unable to stop laughing as we rolled to the bottom of the hill soaked and giddy. Don´t think zorbing can be classified as an adventure sport but it´s certainly good fun.
After drying off somewhat we drove back to the lake front where Ronan demolished Ciaran in a game of mini golf. We had a few beers that night in a local tavern called the
Grumpy Mole and watched some of the State of Origin Rugby League that was on in Oz before calling it a night.
The next day we left our hostel and drove to our last Thermal Park - Wai-o-tapu. The reason for going to another park was to see the Lady Knox geyser which erupts everyday at 10.30am (With a little help from a guy with some soap).
The geyser was spectacular blasting water up to 20 meteres in the sky. Afer watching the geyser whcih erupts for up to an hour we walked the vast park. The Champagne pool which is a host of different colours was amazing as were the sulphur caves and Lake Ngakoro . After a couple of hours touring the park we hit the road again.
Next stop Tongariro National Park...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0433s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb