New Zealand - Rotorua

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After a short drive from Taupo to Rotorua we found that it is not actually as smelly as we imagined.

However this place is truly magical. You walk along the street, and where we have drains where all our rainwater goes down, here they have drains where the water comes up. To be precise the water that comes up is actually boling with lots of steam everwhere. It is really strange when you come across a crack in the middle of the road with a fine cloud of steam coming out.

Roturua is a really eerie sort of place. We found 3 caches here in a local park. If you can imagine a large sports field with a bushed area around the perimiter. Within these bushed areas you have parts sectioned off with fences. Within these fences you find bubbling and steaming pools of extremely hot water.

On our way back to the town we decided to take a shortcut across the park avoiding the paths only to find a notice telling us that because the area is in a highly dangerous geothermal area we should at all times stick to the pathways. Now they tell us!

The next day we decided to go off in the van and visit the Geothermal and Volcanic Valley some 10 kms down the road. This was an absolutly fabulous day and we will tell you more later as my time is running out.

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