A day in Rotorua

Anne here…

After a day cwtched up in a pleasant motel room (with its own hot tub) avoiding the rain from Cyclone Cook, it was good to see blue skies first thing.

So a good walk through the Redwood trees of the Whakarewarewa forest on the outskirts of Rotorua was perfect. The Redwoods were just amazing. Also, in the typical New Zealand way, the various routes were really well signposted with lots of helpful information and no car parking charges.

There was a lovely atmosphere: lots of families enjoying the Easter Friday holiday; the regular dog walkers, runners and cyclists.

But the forest is so huge and there are so many different paths that somehow after 10 minutes walking,  we seemed to have our path all to ourselves.

We spent a few days in Rotorua three years ago and loved the area. So it is a real pleasure to be back (although we had slightly forgotten how pungent the smell of sulphur can be! ).

So where do we head back to? Yes… the pub… in fact the Pig and Whistle traditional pub where we had a fab meal three years ago…and yes it is definitely still as good.

Then to walk off our pub meal we headed to Kuirau Municipal Park in the centre of Rotorua. Again a completely free public resource, really well done. But it is just really surreal seeing a municipal park with puffs and clouds of steam just coming out of the ground apparently randomly. In fact they are usually from boiling hot small geothermal pools, which the council has to fence off for safety. We were amazed, intrigued and enthralled.

And then back to the motel for a relaxing soak in the hot tub 🙂