Rotorua

We were up earlyish to goto Rotorua. We were arriving and Emma asked if I'd passed wind the cheeky girl! It stunk of eggs so I wasn't sure but them we realised the area was full of sulphur! The whole town stinks, and it pretty smelly too! Haha.

After arriving we went to 'Hells Gate' which is Rotorua's most active geothermal reserve. We walked around the area which resembled (what I imagine) another planet. There were bubbling mud pools, yellow rocks and steam coming out of the ground!! We also stood 1 metre away from the largest volcano in New Zealand.... Mud volcano that is which stood at about 1 metre high and had bubbling substances erupting from the top. With pools/holes named things like 'sulphur bath', 'devils bath', 'inferno pools' and 'devils cauldron' it summed up the eeriness of the place!

After the walk we hand carved our own Maori symbols. Now, I'm not going to say who's was better but mine had smooth lines and no scratches(!) and Emma was sad that hers looked rubbish!

We then went for our mud bath! We had to resist a mud pit fight as if it got in your eyes you go blind (not quite that severe but it still hurts!). We covered each other in mud and sat in it for 20 minutes! We absolutely stank of sulphur. We changed into a clean pool before having a shower. Our skin still smells of sulphur even though we had a shower, hopefully it will be OK tomorrow!!

Unfortunately the next day we still smelt a bit as did the towels and our swimmers.

We decided to goto another geothermal park to see an errupting geyser. We had two parks to choose from. We luckily chose the right one, as we got to see a natural geyser consistently errupting the whole time we were there! We found out that the other geyser was a fake eruption and set off manually at 10.15 everyday!!

We had a really good guided tour from a mauri lady and were shown the geysers. It was excellent and shooting metres into the air. One was even called the Prince of Wales feathers!!

We were so impressed by all the volcanic activity that we decided on a new plan so made a booking to go see and walk on an active volcanoe, as you do, no biggie(!) and headed north to Whakatane. When we arrived we had a beer while watching a band at a mini festival which was nice to chill out too.

We had to call the tour company to check they were going which they confirmed they were! Yay.