Rotorua

My first day in Rotorua, on the 17th of July, was a bit of a slower one as I had had an incredibly intense week of travels, and it was raining. Some background on Rotorua, it is one of the most thermally active areas in New Zealand, with Lake Rotorua being a volcanic crater, and there just randomly rising up hot water from the ground, sometimes just a meter off the pavement in a normal neighbourhood.

Lake Rotorua

I didn’t end up leaving the hostel until after lunch, with the goal of exploring the thermal activity inside the city proper. My general plan was to walk the waterfront of Motutara point, then continue along the shore before heading back through Kuirau park which would bring me past most of the freely accessible geothermal activity in the city. Walking northeast through the drizzle from my hostel, I quickly reached the waterline with its volcanic white mud shores and smoke rising further out.

Sulphur point

It is quite a fascinating combination of nature’s most primal forces, and the mundanity of seagulls flocking right amidst it. All juxtaposed with blaring warning signs and a medium-sized city just minutes walk away. Heading out further on the peninsula, I met a gaggle of geese on the road, and out in the water a black swan was keeping up with me. The whole thing turned into a bit of a wildlife photography session, which was a pleasant surprise, though I really do not have the camera for it.

Motutara point

Out on the tip of the peninsula there was the oddest sight, an old steamship on stilts, in a car park. Never did figure out what it was doing there. Then onwards along the shore, which relatively soon turned from a natury park into more of a promenade, with lots of black swans swimming just along the shore. They are quite stunning in their own way, completely black but with bright red beaks, probably just slightly smaller than our common mute swan (yes it is apparently called that) in Sweden.

Looking out over Ohinemutu

Then back into the city which brought me on my first detour, into the Maori village/neighbourhood of Ohinemutu. It was a surreal place, the combination of the traditional red Maori architecture and steaming water coming out of the ground just by the road-side, or in the middle of a car park. I can’t imagen how it would be like to live where the ground can literally start pushing boiling water up in the middle of your garden, that type of geological hyperactivity doesn’t sit quite right in my middle of a continental plate, super geologically stable, Swedish heart.

Finally heading back through Kuirau park I got probably the coolest thermal views of the day, with a large dangerously warm lake, some lightly boiling mud, a large steaming rock pile and best of all, a free to use foot bath feed with warm water from the hot springs. I spent maybe 20 minutes resting there, before heading back the last of the way to the hostel.

But my day wasn’t quite over there, as I after a bit of a coffee break, went to see the other major nature sight of Rotorua, the Redwood forest. Not as absolutely enormous as I believe the California Redwoods are, they were still very tall trees and more than a meter in diameter, towering over our common pines back home, while still reminding me of those forests.

Walking among those giants in the fog, as twilight fell, was really quite something. Very different than any other forest I’d been to so far in New Zealand, it both felt extremely alien and somewhat like home. My route among them brought me up the back hills of the forest, where an old quarry lay offering some views, off mostly fog.

This is where I will have to cut our story short, as I have another even more packed day of geothermal wonders that will leave this post way too long. After heading back from the redwoods in the dark, I enjoyed the hostels jacuzzi for a bit and then headed off to an early bed to prepare for an early morrow start.