Rotorua (Hamilton Part 1)

We're in the Hamilton area for only a couple of days, and not sure we'll really see much of the city. Today we ventured to Rotorua, a town similar to other tourisy towns, with the main attraction being the hot springs. We stopped at a nice little cafe called the Alley Cats Cafe in Tirau for our morning coffee. In Rotorua, our first stop was the DOC (Department of Conservation), where we were given some good advice on things to do that weren't too touristy for today and tomorrow. These included a couple of hikes and one set of hot springs. By the time we left town, after purchasing some meat pies for lunch, it was almost noon. We headed towards the hot springs and found a picnic spot by a lake for lunch, and then were off to Hells Gate. This is Rotorua's most active geothermal park, offering both walks around the ponds and spa treatments. We opted only for the walk, which was about an hour, with strict warnings everywhere to stay on the paths. You can be thankful that I can't share the smell with you, which was a slightly sweet but very strong sulphur. The pools are incredible, you never expect to see water boiling in a pond, and some of them are incredibly acidic, with a pH of 1.0.

The hottest was between 120-140C, with the bubbling reaching about 3m in the air!

The landscape was quite harsh, even down to the smallest size, where there were tiny holes in the ground with sulphur gas bubbling out, leaving the edges of the holes yellow. Guess it's kind of hard to see in this picture, just more of the bubbling muddy water. Amazingly, there were a lot of birds around, with quite a few oystercatchers nesting near the ponds.

Needing a bit of real exercise, we drove around to Lake Tarawera, east of Rotorua, to hike part of the Tarawera Trail. This is a 15km one way track along the lake. Nothing spectacular, but a good bush trail with a few nice views over the lake. We did about 8km return from the one end. If we'd known about it earlier, we probably would have booked the water taxi to the far end and done the whole thing.

Tomorrow is partly weather dependant as rain is forecast for the morning and high winds for the afternoon. We might head back to Tirau, where the DOC agent recommended a short walk, or we might head east to the beach in hopes of better weather.