Rotorua is the sort of place which you really should make time to go to. If nothing else, it will make you feel much better about your personal hygiene.

No, it's not that all the locals smell, but the town is built around various sulphur pools which emit the classic 'rotten egg' smell of schoolboy stink bombs.

The odour isn't constant or omnipresent. Much of the time you don't notice it at all. Then you turn a corner and it just hits you straight in the nostrils. It's as if something had crawled up Katy's backside and died. Not mine, of course.

One good thing about Rotorua is that quite a lot of the attractions are free. On our first day there, Thursday the 12th, we wandered round Kaurau park near the city centre. Initially, it just looks like any grassy park, then you notice steam rising from fenced off areas. And then there's the smell, of course.

The park had lots of bubbling mud pools glooping away to themselves, plus steamy waters forming a small, murky lake. We spent about an hour wandering around while Katy took what seemed like a hundred photos and a dozen videos.

That night, I decided to stay up into the early hours and listen to the racing from Cheltenham on the internet. I'd tried that in Whitianga but the local system had gone down, leaving me frustrated. So I read through the form while Katy slept, worked out a few small bets - only for a power cut to occur an hour before the first race. Was I cursed?

The next day, we got stuck into the freebies again with a walk round the Redwoods. This is an area which was planted with Californian Redwood trees many years ago and now the young saplings have attained the huge heights, if not the girths, of the indigenous Kauri trees we saw earlier in our trip.

That night was my last chance to listen to the racing and finally I succeeded. No equipment failures, no power cuts, just uninterrupted radio coverage courtesy of Betfair. I even made a small profit thanks to backing an outsider which was placed in the second race. I didn't get a lot of sleep, mind you, given that the Gold Cup - the highlight of the meeting - finished around 4.30am local time.

Two things we had planned to do while in the Rotorua area were golf cross and disc golf. The former is golf, but played over a rougher course than normal - and instead of holes, there are nets into which you must chip the unusual oval ball. We would have played in Wanaka, but Katy had hurt her hand.

There was meant to be a course a few miles north of Rotorua, but when we phoned the number listed on about five internet sites, the woman who answered denied all knowledge of it. And the NZ golf cross association didn't answer our emails, so we abandoned that activity.

That left only disc golf - or Frisbee golf to give it another name. We had played that in Queenstown and knew of two courses in Rotorua. We set off in search of one which was close to our camp, but could find no trace of it. Given that the area had been developed a bit, we assumed that the course had been abandoned.

Never mind, we thought, there's another one we can play. Or was there? According to the internet site, it was meant to be near the Redwood forest and we even received directions from a woman who runs a nearby campsite. Could we find it? Could we b*****y! We marched backwards and forwards, tramping up and down through the woods with no trace of a single tee or target.

Yes, Katy found some brilliantly red toadstools to photograph, the kind you see in children's fairytale books, but they weren't exactly what we were after.

Eventually, after asking at the local i-Site and also questioning various people out walking - all to no avail, of course - we came across a woman exercising her dog. Did she know of a disc golf course, by any chance? To our disbelief, she did! In fact, we were actually standing on part of it. 'Oh yes, they do it a lot here at the weekends,' she said. We asked where the targets were, because we couldn't see any. 'They take them down when they finish,' she explained.

It was Monday, naturally. We should have come out the previous day. Arrgghh!!!

What we had done on the Sunday was in fact great fun, though would have been so on any day of the week. We took the gondola up the local mountain - well, it was more of a hill, we thought, and it only went halfway up in any case. The idea wasn't to appreciate the view over the town and the lake, however, but to go on the luge.

This wasn't the Olympic kind of luge which is where you slide down ice feet first on what looks like a tin tray. The Rotorua luges (and those at Queenstown as well) are like plastic go-karts with the wheels hidden underneath and with a combined steering handle and brake for control. Turn left and right as normal; pull back to brake and let it go forward to go faster.

Now, I'm not too good with speed thrills, as the Bulgarian doctor who has treated me for a dislocated shoulder and a broken arm would willingly attest. So I wasn't overly keen on doing this activity, particularly when we saw a youth with a bloodied knee being treated at the first aid post. The betting was slightly odds on that I would fall off and damage one limb or another.

Summoning up my courage, however, I got onto my luge and followed Katy off down the scenic (aka gentle) run - compulsory for all first-timers. It was actually very good fun and after a bit of meandering around and passing people who seemed to have locked their brakes on, I shot up Katy's inside and maintained my lead all the way to the line.

Katy of course cried foul at that, as she hadn't been expecting any overtaking. So we headed for the intermediate run, which was a bit steeper and faster. Katy set off in front again and kept me shut in on the inside of the corners, but I managed to overtake her on the outside for the win.

Our final run was on the advanced course, which was the steepest and fastest. I had to set off first and made a critical mistake by getting stuck momentarily behind someone slow. Katy did her best Lewis Hamilton impression and whizzed up my inside before I could react. Despite my best efforts on what was a trickier course - with one place where we both left the ground and another where a reverse camber tried to throw us off the track - Katy held on for victory.

As my first win had been a bit of a cheat, we declared honours to be even. We may well return to the area in April and if so, we will have a return match.

We actually ended up staying for six nights in Rotorua. This was partly due to the fact that the camp owner gave us 'three nights for the price of two' deals, even though that offer wasn't meant to come into effect till later in the season.

We eventually left the town on Wednesday the 18th and headed a few km south in search of more free attractions. One of the best walks in the area is meant to be up Rainbow Mountain and we resolved to give it a go despite the damp weather. By the time we arrived, however, the rain had stopped and it was turning out nice.

Thus encouraged, we headed off on what was meant to be a 90 minutes each way hike - given that we seem to beat these estimates by about a third, we thought it would barely be an hour to the top. The first 30-minute section took us literally eight minutes. The second 30-minute section took no more than ten. We failed to notice that the official sign indicating the final 30 minutes to the top had been amended by someone who had crossed out 30 and scrawled 50 on instead.

This anonymous walker was oh, so correct! It took a good 50 minutes of steep walking, at times holding onto trees and bushes in order to scale the steeper sections. Katy would like to point out that it was a lot easier than the Castle Rock walk/climb she did a couple of weeks ago, but it was plenty steep enough.

That completed, we went in search of nearby Kerosene Creek - a hot river which steamed its way along. We found it ok, but it looked a bit murky to take a dip in, though some Kiwis did have a plunge.

Instead we went to our campsite at Waikete, where free hot pools were on offer. This was an excellent little camp - not cheap, but guests could use any of the half dozen hot water pools on site. They were all heated by water from a natural spring - the water comes out of the ground at 98 degrees Celsius and is mixed with cold to more bearable temperatures of between 36 and 41 according to the type of pool.

We spent an hour or so in the afternoon warming ourselves and luxuriating in the feeling of all-over hot water. We haven't had that sensation much since being in NZ! After dinner and a couple of drinks we even went back and repeated the experience in the early evening dark, which was even better given the contrast of the cold night air.

The next morning, we set off quite early (for us, anyway) to the Waiotapu thermal park. We knew we had to arrive before 10.15am which is when the guide books all told us that the Lady Knox geyser erupts. We did so, and took our places nice and early in the front row, slightly worried whether we might get soaked.

The allotted time arrived and a guide showed up, stood by the spout and started telling us about the geyser. I was quite looking forward to it starting up and spurting all over him, if I'm honest. However, there was zero chance of that.

Why not? The guide explained that about 100 years ago, there was a prison nearby and the inmates found a hot spring when they were clearing vegetation from the area. They thought it would be useful to wash their clothes in, so returned a couple of days later with their dirty laundry and some soap. They wet their clothes, put the soap on them, then put the clothes back in the spring to rinse them. It was only then that the geyser erupted.

As the guide explained, the detergent dissipated the cooler water which was on the surface of the pool, allowing the hotter water underneath to break through and shoot high into the air - much to the prisoners' shock.

At this point, the guide took out some blocks of soap (non-harmful to the natural environment, of course) from a brown paper bag and threw them down the vent. There was some foaming and bubbling and after a few seconds, the Lady Knox geyser erupted - or should we say, was made to erupt! Ah the wonders of nature, even if they have to be forced a little for the tourists.

After that, we headed for the main section of the Waiotapu thermal park. There are several similar attractions in the area, but we had chosen this one partly because of the geyser and partly because other Off Exploring bloggers had said it was good.

We walked for a couple of miles along the paths, taking in the various and varied sights. There were craters and caves which looked like lime green paint had been splashed inside them, but that was a result of natural sulphur rather than graffiti. We passed alongside lakes which were so hot that the resulting steam surrounded us and cut our vision to a few feet.

Katy's favourite areas were the Artist's Palette, which had a bright red-orange rim around a steaming lake, and the Devil's Inkpots, a series of bubbling pools, made black by natural oil being sucked upwards from the earth beneath.

The photos we took don't really do justice to the colours and the spectacular nature of the terrain.

After the park, we drove off in search of a low-cost DOC site but found one even cheaper on the edge of Lake Rerewhakaaitu. Although a sign said to put money in envelopes and then into a box, neither envelopes nor a box was provided so we had our first free site in NZ. There were no facilities barring a cold water tap and a decent enough toilet (flushing water, phew!) so we stayed there a couple of nights to save some money.

Oh, and I have to admit that we played Scrabble. And Katy beat me. For the first time. I am still in shock. It will be the last!

Richard