Road Trip to Rotorua – Day 3

March 9th – In our “wisdom state” from the night before, we booked a time at the geothermal area called Wai-O-Tapu. To quote the website – A Wonderland of Stunning Geothermal Activity. Ok, so this isn’t Disneyland, but it is pretty cool. They have bubbling mud. Need I say more…?

Our first stop was Lady Knox Geyser. At 10:15am they “provoke” her to show her stuff. You can imagine what I was thinking when I heard they “provoke” her. Name calling, pushing, throwing things at here. I wasn’t far off – they throw detergent down her throat. (FYI….I was a straight A student in Science. Very technically minded – not.) That makes her show her stuff for 10-15 seconds. “They” supposedly discovered the process for provoking the geyser because it was near an old prison. The prisoners used to come to that area to wash their clothes and lo and behold, they got some detergent in the geyser by accident. Or so the story goes. This is why we were up and moving well before any of us wanted to be, with a slight headache.

Next, we moved on to the main part of the park. It was really quite amazing seeing all the little puffs of smoke dot the area. Each one being some sort of geothermal activity. And there were loads of pools, all different colours. The colour of the pool depends on which minerals are present. See, I did learn something technical.

Thankfully, it was an overcast day as it was a super hot place. The humidity is insane. I have naturally curly hair. When I am in a humid climate, I slowly start looking wilder and wilder since my hair takes on a life of its own. There are no surviving pictures of me when my hair gets like that because everyone thinks it’s just a picture of a giant rat’s nest. Delete, delete, delete….

We spent quite a bit of time at Wai-O-Tapu. What that means is that we needed to feed the little children currently switching to monster meltdown mode. We headed out to a traditional kiwi tavern – Waiotapu Tavern. M said these places always promise to be quite the experience. Quite the crew of characters in these places, drinking, smoking, wearing stubbies and playing pool. And this place definitely delivered that. Just to add to the fun, the tavern is right next door to an apiary called Arataki. Arataki Honey is the number one beekeeping business in the Southern Hemisphere, with 20,000 hives across New Zealand. It felt like most of those hives were next door to the tavern. The place had bees flying all over and inside the tavern. Another thing about me – I am absolutely terrified of bees. I mean over the top terrified. Pure and simple an irrational fear – phobia of bees. Don’t ask why, it is a long story but the gist is that I got stung a lot, on couple of different outings. So…. lunch was ultra relaxing….. I kept jumping up and running around. Really keeping it together for the kids and not panicking. I have no idea how, but the kids didn’t notice a thing. I think they were too busy with their doughnut in a tea cup to notice my manic behaviour. Needless to say, we left immediately after lunch. I wasn’t done chewing and already in the car waiting for everyone else.

It was just M and I with the kids. The Kiwi and Axel left us to go rafting the famous 7 metre Tutea Falls, the Highest Commercially Rafted Waterfall in the World commercially (Grade 5). They both claim to have done it and not flipped but we have yet to see the pictures.

Since we had some time to kill, M and I took the kids to do some luging at Skyline Rotorua. It had started to rain at this point. Enough that neither M or I were particularly happy about getting soaked. So we bought ponchos to wear while luging. We all looked like giant condoms. Since it was raining, they decided to close the advanced run. I can tell you that both the beginner and intermediate are not for the faint of heart. Do not want to know what the advanced run looks like. Both Peanut and Monkey wiped out hard on the tracks. Some good road rash and mud on their faces and arms. I have no idea how I managed to stay on the track since my brakes weren’t working. The speed I got on that thing was a bit much. They take their luging very seriously over there.

To celebrate our survival we had some ice cream while we waited for the boys to show up. We were meeting up there so we could all head out to dinner together. By now, it was raining pretty hard. So we went to this little pedestrian covered street where there were loads of little restaurants. Really neat little spot.

After dinner, the plan was to head to Hell’s Gate. Hell’s Gate is an active geothermal reserve and mud spa. I was feeling pretty crap. Don’t think I drank enough water during the day so I sat this one out. Apparently, it was an awesome place. All I know is that when they came back they smelt like rotten eggs. I can tell you that I was relieved that I hadn’t gone to a hot, steamy, smelly place feeling like I did. Besides, it gave me time to get a head start on packing. Next destination – Napier!