Yes this place does stink!! I can't believe Sarah was not woken up by the smell as she dutifully slept in the passenger seat leaving me to navigate into the city map-free!! Luckily Rotorua is more of a town than a city!!We arrived here early afternoon and headed straight to the tourist office to find something to do for the afternoon/evening, having already booked a white-water rafting trip for Friday morning.

First we headed to Hells Gate which is a big geothermal area with bubbling mud-pools, hot springs, a mud volcano, spas, a hot stream and waterfall, it also stinks from all the sulphur, like really bad eggs!! The place looks like you are on another planet, maybe on the moon, but it got its name as a famous Irish poet said it looked like the gates of hell!It was an interesting place to look around and there was a pool where we could stick our hands in to feel the water and the mud, so I was happy!

We then went to look around Kuirau Park, which is in the middle of the Rotorua city centre but is very bizarre because there is loads of geothermal activity there, hot pools and sulphur lakes, the biggest lake in the middle gives off loads of steam.It seems like the holes just appear in random places and it is not uncommon for gardens to have a hot pool in them!

In the evening we went to a Maori concert and Hangi.We were a bit unsure as to whether we would enjoy it but everyone had told us we had to go and experience it!It was an evening of complete cheese but good fun and very interesting and the hangi was an all you can eat buffet of meat, potatoes, salad, puddings, all cooked traditionally in a underground BBQ!The meat was so tender, we had a good feed!

The concert consisted of a tribe coming down the river on a war canoe, then the group of men and women showed us the traditional Maori songs, dances, weapons and customs, it was really interesting and quite intimidating during the hakas when they all bulge their eyes, stick out their tongues and slap themselves really hard!!There were many youngsters involved which was really nice to see young people embracing their culture and keeping it alive!

We ended the night by heading to a couple of pubs in Rotorua with Pete Walker, a mate of mine from school, his girlfriend and a few randoms they had met! Bed after a few beers to get some rest before our rafting adventures to come in the morning!!

Lots of Love

A&S xxx