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Our next stop was Rotorua. It was great driving towards the Lake and seeing the steam rising from the ground (due to all the geothermal activity) the smell was really strong too at first! The steam smells like gone off egg sandwiches, but it was funny how quickly we got used to it! We stayed at a funny little holiday camp called Cosy Cottages which was pretty cool, it had under ground geothermal heating for tents, an outdoor steam hangi oven and some hot mineral pools! It was tipping it down when we got there so a soak in the hot mineral pools was greatly appreciated! It was very close to the lake and the walk down was so surreal, every so often there's would be a hole just off the track with hot steam coming off and either boiling water or mud at the bottom! James went for a run and had a good explore of the town running through the thermal parks I was so jealous of the photos when he came back that my smugness of curling up in the van reading a book soon went away!!! It was ok though as the next day James got a bike fix and I had a good wander through town. We had spotted a place the day before on our way in to Rotorua, it was a cool biking centre with over 145km of bike tracks, James managed to hire a brand new 2013 duel suspension bike to play on . . . He was a very happy boy :) That gave me time to wander round the parks of Rotorua and take in all the weird and amazing (and smelly!) geothermal activity! I then picked up a tired, muddy and very happy James from the Redwood Tracks and we drove to Waikite Hot Pools and Thermal area where we were hoping to stay for the night but they were fully booked :( we did make the most of the thermal pools though! Which were very relaxing and hot!!! We also walked up to the huge natural boiling hot spring which was amazing, we were fascinated by the temperature and how clear the water was. We managed to find a nice DOC campsite close by on Lake Rerewhakaaitu which ended up being free . . . even better! The next morning we went to the Wai O-Tapu Thermal Area and Lady Knox Geyser. We started off by seeing the Geyzer as they are only allowed to set it off once a day at 10:15am but what we didn't realise is that at 10:20am there was a solar eclipse!! It was hilarious as no one knew where to point their cameras!!
We then walked round the thermal area, it was so beautiful And so surreal! We saw red, green, blue, yellow, black, milky steaming lakes. Strange moss and algey,craters and collapsed craters, strange rock formations, and loads of other wacky strange geothermal volcanic formations. We loved it there and were glad that we payed to go in, It made the crazy parks in Rotura look normal!
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