Rotorua / Waitomo

Finally the sun came out!!!

By day 4 in NZ we have seen/driven through more than half of the north island. The drive is always breathtaking with rolling hills of green lush, wild growing hydrangeas of all shades, sheep graising on hills, and perfectly black and white spotted cows. Everything seems to be straight out of a movie. Most of the land is farmland, a lot like the drives through most of TX, but a lot more forested like Pennsylvania. If I could compare this part of NZ to one place in the world I would say it looks a lot like Scotland, but who am I to know… I’ve never been! Today we started in Rotorua (the rotten egg smell is not as bad as expected but still noticeable). We drove 20 min south and ended up at waiotaupo geothermal wonderland. It was pretty spectacular! For my geology friends- it was definitely the most amazing geological thing I’ve ever experienced… I just wish I knew a little more prehistory before I went. We sat around with a crowd around 10:15 am waiting for the Lady Knox Geyser to erupt… we kept waiting and waiting. Finally, a man came out and stood right next to the geyser with a microphone. I was so scared for his life because I assume this water to be extremely hot and I thought it was going to erupt any minute now! Well, he begins to tell us this story about these prisoners in the early 1900s that would come out into the rotorua area to build roads and highways… a very dangerous job back then. They came across these hot streams and would start taking hot baths in them everyday. Then they found this hole that had steaming water and decided to wash their clothes with soap in the water, well little did they know that the SOAP would be the one to set off the geyser. They built up these rock around the geyser to add more pressure to it, so they could shoot the water up higher and higher each time. So now to this day, the park has set off the geyser every day for the past 80+ years by a bar of soap. Who would have known…

Our next stop was a 2 hour drive west to waitomo glowworm caves. I had read about black water rafting in these caves, which sounded awesome! Well, it was pretty cool, but I think they should call it black water floating. The water was very cold, so everyone wore wet suits. We climbed through the cave probably half as much as we tubed, which wasn’t really expected but it was still well worth it. Once we finally started floating, everyone turned off their headlamps and watched the twinkling neon green glowworms, it looked like a million stars.  The total trip took 3 hours and then we headed to Taupo immediately after, had dinner and made plans for the rest of our trip. I guess you’ll have to wait and see what those plans are, huh? I promise they won’t disappoint!

champagne lake--rotorua