Sulphur City

If any town deserves its nickname, it would have to be the tourist-hotspot Rotorua. I already got to smell the vulcanic activity in this area a month ago, on my bus ride from Wellington to Auckland. I don’t mind it that much, and I got used to it after a while, but when the first punget wave of rotten eggs hit my face, I was a bit overwhelming. I had to think back to when I visited the Italian vulcano Stromboli with my family and my brother constantly whined about the stink. He didn’t even take a hot mud bath at a pool, while I got completely covered in therapeutic vulcanic dirt.

The weekend was exciting, we were really busy. To be honest, I left exhausted, feeling like I could sleep for a week. And I took 938 pictures that I sorted through on the busride back to Auckland. I won’t post all of them that I decided to keep here – that’s still over 200. And I don’t have good enough Internet access so that it wouldn’t take hours to upoad them.

We arrived in Rotorua at Friday night and found our amazing hostel without major problems. And we could sleep in the next morning – almost till 7:45! What a luxury, I am not even used to getting up that late. And I’m not that much of a night owl anymore, I’m usually pretty sleeps by 9:30. Oh god, I’m already turning into my mother. Well the hard work and tons of activity all day long probably helps with that. 

Getting up, getting dressed, trying not to wake up our dorm mates, buying breakfast, eating breakfast where we were supposed to get picked up by the shuttle bringing us to the Thermal Wonderland. We waited. We realized we might have waited at the wrong side of the corner shop. We waited a bit longer. 15 minutes after the scheduled pick-up, we got a wee bit nervous. Missing the bus by being too dumb to wait in the right spot would not have been a great start into the weekend. Finally, the shuttle showed up. The driver jumped out and asked us if we slept in this morning. Sheepishly, we got onto the bus. Somehow, we didn’t see the other one that tried to pick us up 20 minutes earlier. Luckily, the company operates two busses and leaves nobody behind, even if they are late. Despite the delay we were on time to see the eruption of the Lady KnoxGeyser.

Every day at 10:15, they pour soap into it, and the Geyser erupts due to a chemical reaction. This was also discovered by convicts wanting to wash their clothes in hot springs. I don’t think they were happy about the boiling hot surprise shower.  It was cool, not as big as Yellowstone’s Old Faithful, but it kept on spitting for by far longer. In fact, I don’t know how long, since we had to get back to the bus to get to Wai-O-Tapo.

At the bus, the driver told us that the other bus, the one we were supposed to catch, had a flat tire, so the people on it were brought to the park in vans and had missed Lady Knox. Ah, sometimes the irony is just awesome.

We had to rush through Wai-O-Tapu a bit, since our receptionist gave us an amazing tip for the end of the tour, but I took a bunch of really pretty pictures. 

Then we walked to a spot where a hot and a cold river meet and took a little dip. Thanks to our receptionist at RSB for the great idea! It was nice, totally worth hurrying a bit earlyer.

However, that's why I don't like guided tours, I don't like the time limits and the pressure to be there and done at exactly the right time. I like taking my time. However, that's hard without a car.

Then we went to Waimangu, the less touristic geothermal attraction. While Tapu was crowded with people who constantly were in my way when taking pictures, we hardly met a soul in Waimangu.

I love the mystic mist

The Inferno Crater, we were really lucky to see it this skyblue

We were back in Rotorua in the early afternoon and decided to look around town a bit. It is not much but shops and hostels, but the lake is gorgeous. Rotorua is actually a Maori word, Roto means lake and rua two. So Lake Rotorua is actually Lake Lake Two.

This asshole hissed at me when I was taking pictures

In the town itself, there is a lot of vulcanic activity as well, there are a bunch of hot pools. And it's funny how sometimes some smoke comes out of the gullies

This is Rachel Pool, a alkaline pool in Rotorua's Government Gardens, a park you should definately visit if you are in town. Formerly named Whangapipiro, it was renamed  after Madam Rachel, a notorious English cosmetician who promised youthful complexions because of the softening effect of silica water on the skin.

There are still a bunch of big, old trees around the area. This one is in Government Gardens. 

Since we didn't do a lot that day, we went wall climbing. Our hostel wasn't name Rock Solid Backpackers for nothing - They have a indoor climbing gym! So we did that from 9 at night to 10, and slept well until we had to get up the next morning to go to Hobbiton!

Just outside the shire - It already looks like a movie.

We were so lucky with the weather. The perfect lighting to capture the lush grass and colourful hobbit

holes.

This is something you just have to do if you are ever on the North Island. Even if you are not a big fan of the movies. Some people on our tour had never even watched them. But as fans who had even read the books, Xandra and I enjoyed it all the better.

Bag's End, the home of Bilbo and Frodo

This post box is the only one that openes.

If you are a LOTR-Fan, you probably recognize the oak on top of Bag's End. It's a fake tree. For the original trilogy, they actually used a real tree but glued on all the leaves. Every single one. And with the Hobbit movies, it got even more ridiculous. They could not use the same tree, since the movies are perquels and the oak is supposed to be 60 years younger. So this is a fake tree. The leaves are not a natural green, right? That's because they faded in the New Zealand sun. The same happened when they had to interrupt filming for a few months since Peter Jackson got sick. What made he his crew do? Spraypaint every single leave. The tree was in the movie for about 10 seconds by the way. Our guide told us this and a bunch of other stories about the living movie set. If you have the opportunity, go. It's worth your while.

In the afternoon, we visited Whakarewarewa,  the redwood forest near Rotorua. Even though these are weeds, not native New Zealand plants, they are pretty cool trees. And big. We didn't have any transportation and did not want to wait for a bus, so we just walked there from the city centre. I would not recommend that. It's not that far, only about 45 minutes, but next to a busy road. We took the bus back.

At night, we visited the Maori village Tamaki. There are several around Rotorua, but Tamaki was recommended to us. And we can recommend it as well (at least to men). We learned many things about the Maori culture, and the food was delicious.

I just have a bit of an issue with the lack of gender equality there. It is quite authentic that women are not valued as much as men, as it has been for many years in most cultures. Still, it made my experience less awesome than it could have been. Every bus had to have a "Chief" who had to accept their peace offering. The chief had to be male. When watching the show, no women were allowed to sit in the first row. And we were not allowed to try and learn the Haka. That's what bothers me most, it looked like so much fun! And that's like THE Maori-thing. I wanted to do that as well. I paid for it, as much as the men, and I didn't get the same. Maybe it is a bit petty, but stuff like this perpetuates sexism. So one extra star for the authenticity, but three less for sexism. I just want to Haka. If white men are allowed to do it for fun, women can, too. Feckin sexists, our culture is getting over it as well.

Our male chief standing in my picture's way

The food gets lifted from the ground for the Hangi

One highlight of the night was the busride back into town. I don't want to spoil the surprise for anyone else, but it was fun! 

On Labour Day we split up. Xandra went to Taupo, and I went whitewater rafting and biking. Please appreciate the pictures, since I had to purchase them from the photographer.

This is the highest commercially rafted waterfall, it is seven meters high. Luckily we didn't flip the raft, but one group did. Some people were going down there on kayaks, and that definately looked dangerous. It freaked me out more than rafting it myself.

In the afternoon, I hired a bike at Mountain Bike Rotorua. And I have to tell you here that they are the most amazing, kindest people ever and I recommend their service with all my heart.

I went to the forest again, this time near Te Puia, where the great MTB trails start. There are trails for anyone, easy, relaxing ones and crazy dangerous BMX routes that are more stressful than rafting a 7 meter waterfall, and I did not even do anything past intermediate. My brother would have loved it. To get there, however, I had to cycle on the street. Oh man, I was so freaked out. It's so hard to remember to stay left. And the right turns... Horrible. And the cars passed me on the right side! I would probably crash if I drove here. Then again, I would prbably crash my car anywhere. Most of the trails were one way, but I always instinctively went to the right when someone came towards me. I'm sorry, there's a reason I don't drive.

When taking this picture, I layed down on the ground next to the trail to take the picture from below. A bunch of people came past me and freaked out because they thought I fell.

So yeah I think you get that I was pretty exhausted at the end of Labour Weekend. We left in the evening and I spent the busride looking through pictures. But when we came back to Auckland, the exercise for the day was not over. To get to Titirangi, we had to catch the train and then the bus. Since it was Labour Day, there was no bus service after 9. So we had to walk to the house from New Lynn. It took us about one-and-a-half hours. We even tried to hitchhike, but didn't get far. It's surprisingly hard. A college student picked us up for a bit. She told us she wanted to go to the USA soon to travel around in the southern states. I think she did it mainly for good Karma. I hope she has better luck than us if she ever needs to hitch a lift. Anyways, she was super nice and we had a great time on our ten minute ride. In case you are wondering, hitch hiking is not that dangerous here, many volunteers of our team have done it around Auckland already, just not at night. And after the long, dull busride, we needed a bit of excitement.

We slept well, until we had to get up and leave for the short work week.