NZ - Day 6 - Rotorua

Wednesday, 29 January 2020

Rotorua was on the agenda for today's rest (ha ha) day. After a cooked breakfast thanks to Jon we set off on the hour's drive just after nine with the Luge on the top of our to do list.  It seems that many of the NZ schools are back, so the Luge was the quietest we have seen it, which is a good thing too as we all bought 7 rides which would have taken a while to get through on a busy day!

(one idiot in this photo doesn't know where the camera is!) 

After our rides we did a quick-ish stop at the supermarket then headed to the Redwoods Forest for a picnic lunch and a shortish (4k) walk.  We reminisced about the last time we were here for orienteering in 2017 when we had to crash through the ferns thick forest and pop out of bracken onto tracks in front of unsuspecting and shocked tourists! 

By the time we'd finished walking it was around 3, and for a moment we feared that we were going to be too late to get into the Thermal Wonderland place - Wai-O-Tapu but luckily it was operating on a summer schedule so we were fine.   It's actually the first time we've visited a commercial place with craters and mud pools - previously we have just gone to the free ones around the parks and in nearby forest. Not surprisingly these were much easier to get a good look into and it was all very impressive.

By the time we left it was almost 6pm so it was time to hit the road again for our journey back to Taupo.  After about 7ks of walking all up it wasn't a rest day but it was certainly a fun day out!