Our next stop was for 2 nights in Rotorua, at a great little campground where our tent was right on the bank of a trout fishing stream. They even had kayaks for borrowing, but it was only after getting into one that I discovered they were designed with holes through them to let the water out...and in! A swimsuit would have been better attire than my shorts but Xavier and I had a nice paddle down the river to the lake and back.
Even though it was a grey, cloudy day we figured we should get out and enjoy the gondola and luge riding as the weather might be worse the next day! So we all rode the gondola up to the top of a hill where there are several race tracks that wind their way down through the forest. Head protection was mandatory!
Jackson was old enough to drive a luge cart by himself while I took Xavier in a tandem and Daddy drove his with one hand on the controls and snapped away with the camera in the other. Jackson drove very cautiously for his first run but made it without incident and a great big smile on his face!
After getting to the bottom of the track, you get to ride a chairlift back to the top again - awesome!
This time Daddy took Xavier for a spin and afterwards Xavier said it was much faster with Daddy! I followed along behind Jackson who was just in his glory being able to drive himself.
Looking back from the chairlift you got great views over Lake Rotorua, even with all the clouds!
What was waiting for us at the top of the gondola after we`d finished our luge rides? A Jelly Belly store!! We all filled a box with little sample packs of different flavours...then tried to figure out who had gotten what afterwards in the van. They had even had Jelly Belly art - giant recreations of famous paintings using only Jelly Bellys!
"Something smells stinky!" was a constant comment by the boys as we then went for a walk through a downtown park. It was filled with fenced off areas that contained pools of bubbling mud, steaming water and hissing fumerols. And also filled with the strong smell of rotten eggs!
For a change of pace and some more FREE adventures (Rotorua is full of expensive tourist trap activities) we headed to a nearby reserve area that is home to the largest freshwater spring in the North Island - Hamurana Springs. The water is crystal clear and the lovely trail around the spring fed pond and river winds through a Californian Redwood Forest. The trees are over 100 years old. They were part of an experimental forest where they planted over 200 species of trees introduced from around the world to see what would grow well in NZ. Redwoods were a hit.
You can see the deep source of the main spring here underneath the platform.
This guy managed to put his nose of the kayak upstream and into the rapid, force it down and then the water helped him literally perform a somersault above the water in his kayak (the picture shows him in mid-flip). Way cool!
He also navigated the falls on the left of this photo successfully!
Back to the land of boiling mud and smelly hot pools, we explored Wai-o-tapu and saw the Lady Knox Geyser erupt promptly at 10:15, shooting water 10-20 meters in the air (they help it along to maintain the scheduled viewings!)
The boys taking turns reading the map and self-guided tour directions. They did very well, given the somewhat dangerous and unstable nature of the terrain and the necessity of staying on the path.
The sinter terraces are a collection of minerals that are left behind as water sloshing over the edge of the champagne pool in the photo below slowly evaporates away. NZ used to have large pink and white terraces but they were covered by a volcanic eruption in the 1800`s. Obviously they take hundreds of years in the making.
New location - still MORE WATER!
Waiting for the flood gates to open in a sense as they release the dam 3 times per day for 15 minutes to allow water to flow through the rapids and down the river.
Yet another FALLS . . .
Child number 2 was suitably unimpressed. And basically refused to walk back to the car. It had been a long day, with lots of time spent watching moving, bubbling, flowing, boiling, steaming, spouting, rushing, tumbling, spraying, splashing WATER! (At least the sun was shining by the end of the second day in Rotorua)
Little did the kids know, mommy & daddy had a secret to spring on them after dinner: Our new campground had a thermal pool to SOAK in the water, a splash pad to RUN through the water and a water slide to SLIDE down the water - time for a swim! We were much too tired to take the camera, but if you`re ever in Taupo try DeBrett`s Geothermal Hot Springs.
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