I am in possibly the smelliest place I have ever been (and yes, that includes some parts of London!).  I arrived in Rotorua yesterday and nothing could have prepared me for the smell, but already, I am kind of getting used to it.  Because there is a lot of Sulphur around here, it constantly smells like rotten eggy farts!  Some places are worse than others and it also depends on which way the wind is blowing (no pun intended there!).  It's a nice city situated right on a lake, which is named Rotorua Lake.  Yesterday I took a walk around some of the lake which took me to the Sulphur Flats.  It is really quite stunning and the water is like a grey/white cloudy colour and in some parts, where the temperature is very high, steam comes off.  I found some holes in the rocks with mud bubbling away and steam coming out of them and they stunk.  It was a beautiful sunny day so it all look amazing.  I did get a bit of a headache because of all of the sulphur but it doesn't seem to have affected me so much today.

Today is another beautiful day so I went down to the Polynesian Spa.  You pay $15NZ to use the adult pools.  One is like a swimming pool and there are a couple of smaller spas to use.  They are all very hot and you can't stay in too long because it gets too warm.  It was so relaxing and I got chatting to a local old boy who had been in there for 3 hours (I was going to make a joke about him going all wrinkly being in the water that long, but I didn't want to offend him!).  He goes down there everyday 365 days a year!  It's nice but not that great!

Thanks for the message Yorkie - I drove through Plimmerton a few times and it always looked so pretty.  My friend Tali thinks it's lovely, shame I didn't get a chance to explore it properly.

As most tourist places, things to do here are quite expensive.  So I am just chilling out and going for walks.  Here until Friday so I guess tomorrow is another walking day! x x x x x