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I arrived in rotorua on the shadyest plane ever, i have seen small but really i could see the cockpit from my seat and i was in the back row! I even saw my luggage on the plane when i stepped on! It was an interesting flight after you felt every slight novement the plane made (if you had a fear of flying this was not the plane for you)
I arrived safley and met up with my Aunt and Uncle who were visiting New Zealand for 6 weeks and they were kind enough to pay for a hotel room for me for 2 nights. After staying in hostels and on a couch a hotel room or any room that had its own bathroom was paridise!
The room had its own balconey and it looked on to bubbling mud pools and a large geezer that went off from time to time. The smell is really the first thing you notice about rotorua however, it smells of rotten eggs because of the sulpher thats there.
After being setteled we headed for the luge which you have to go on a chairlift to get upto. The best way to describe it is basically go carting without an engine but going down a steep windy hill! I wnet quite cautiously on my first two attempts bascically because my driving skills are not the best! But by the 3rd go you just have to go for it and i managed to get a good amount of speed going, in fact so much speed that i required a foot and a barrierer to prevent my cart going flying of the edge of the track!
The first full day there i went (after a free contintential breakfast buffet, and a shower in my own room, such luxuary!) we went to the living village which is a mauri village that is filled with bubbling mud pools and geezers and when the wind blows a certain way it can look like a horror movie atmosphere! It was quite cool, we also saw a show there performed by the mauri people and the did the haka and some otheres dances and a few songs, they were pretty good.
In the afternoon it was off to the buried village which was a village that surprisingly was buried! It used to be the 8th wonder of the world until a volcanon erupted and buried it under ash. The tour guide was very good there and enthusastic about his culture and i leared what mauri is for thank you, its kia ora (also a refreshing soft drink i bielive!) The village its self was ok, but with it now having a large amount of vegitation on it you lose some of the charcter of the village and its hard to visualise what happened.
On my final day i went to the polynesian spa which apparently was one of the top 10 spas in the world and it was the first spa i had ever been to (not really my kind of thing, i mean they didnt have a bar next to the spa pools!). But i actually had a good time there it was very relaxing and i managed about 4hrs without a tv, ipod or laptop. basically you had 4 naturally heated pools and they got hotter, so its was 36,38,40,42C. It was seriously hot when you got to the 40, i am talking burn your feet hot but the place was excellent and the view from the pools went out onto the ocean.
Then at night i left my aunt and uncle and checked into my backpackers, this one is not much better than in auckland. But i suppose when you are paying 8 pound a night you really cant complain. Tomorrow its to wellington and hopefully the hostel will be better there.
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