Rotorua; Hot Springs & Māori Experiences

Alright folks, gather ’round.. I’ve got a story to tell.

Now everyone knows I’m always up for adventure.

This entire New Zealand trip has been fantastic and full of so many firsts for me.

And one of those firsts was pitching a broken tent in the rain and ending up having to sleep inside the car. 

Yeah.

Rowena and I had to sleep inside the car last night because our tent was leaking so badly and falling down so much that it would have been impossible to sleep in. Sounds pretty bad, eh?

But actually it was pretty great.. We got some whiskey, popped up the laptop to watch a film and just told each other stupid stories all night. While eating an entire box of pizza crackers. We turned a bad scenario into a memorable night and honestly I’m quite glad it happened. It just added to the experiences of our trip together.

But anyway, moving on to what we actually did over the past two days.

We spent the last couple days in Rotorua, a town in New Zealand known for the hot springs under the ground and geysers everywhere. When we drove into the town, the smell of sulfur rotted our noses a bit but once we lost all sense of smell, it wasn’t so bad.. Just kidding, the smell never got better.

But that aside, it was so cool seeing something so beautiful and natural from the earth. There were literally little hot pools located in different places where you could dip your feet in for a bit. And the water was ridiculously hot. Hotter than a hot tub hot. 

There were also geysers all around that you could just walk up to that were magnificent. 

    
 
Then, in the evening, we went to Te Puia, an indigenous Māori experience and got to see a traditional haka and poi – tribal dances of the Māori people. I was even pulled up on stage to dance the poi with the other women and as expected, I flailed around like an idiot not knowing what I was doing. We also saw a weapons display and basically the whole night was amazing. They cooked us traditional Māori dishes from within the heated ground called hangi and then took us to see the massive Pohutu geyser, the largest active geyser in the Southern Hemisphere. 

   
    
    
 
Gorgeous. Mesmerizing.

It was a wonderful two days in Rotorua.