"Dormitories - $22
Singles - $30
Twins/Doubles - $50
Eggy Smell - Free!"
Welcome to Rotorua!
Rotorua is the tourist Mecca of the North Island, a bit like Queenstown is for the South Island. It's main attraction is the high levels of volcanic activity brewing just below the ground which results in countless bubbling pools, steaming multicoloured lakes, yellow sulphur clad rocks and a few geysers thrown in for good measure. But with all this volcanicity comes a drawback - the place stinks, and if you bathe in any of the hot pools you begin to stink too.
The New Zealanders call it "Roto-Vegas", which leads me to question whether the person who coined this phrase had ever been to Las Vegas. There arent any casinos in Rotorua, it isn't in the middle of the desert, and last time I went to Vegas I don't remember many outdoor activities or a pervading odour of egg (apart from near the $15 all you can eat buffets). The similarity is that it's a bit of a playground for tourists and it's relatively hard to find anyone who actually lives there. It's the sort of place that you can quite happily spend a few days and spend an awful lot of cash because it's so geared around tourism and there are so many great things to do that will lighten your wallets.
We travelled down with an English girl called Sarah who'd said that she'd be our friend when we'd met in the Bay of Islands . After establishing that all the hostels in town were full we checked into a modest but adequate cabin just outside the town and after a quick nights rest we embarked on our rigorous and exhaustive tourist activity programme.
First stop was a sheep show - well, it is New Zealand and there's an awful lot of sheep out here to show off. This involved a farm hand leading various different breeds of pedigree sheep onto the stage while a sheep shearer worried them with his clippers. Then later on when the sheep lost interest he turned on a small Japanese boy from the audience and worried him instead. Obviously the pedigree animals were for display purposes only and when it came to the shearing display a suitably woolly and confused specimen was produced from behind a door in the stage to have it's entire coat removed in about 30 seconds. Pretty impressive stuff, though I can safely say I won't be replying to any job adverts for farm hands or sheep shearers when i come to look for work in Australia. After the show we went out to feed the animals and noticed several recently shawn animals nakedly skulking about the paddocks - evidently the victims of previous performances.
Next up was a gondola ride to the top of the hill opposite Lake Rotorua, followed by several goes on the "Street Luge". Street Lugeing involves hurtling down on a narrow concrete track around sharply banked corners in a plastic trolley. There are two things that stop you from ending up in the ditch - the brakes on the front of the cart, and the fear arising from the almost total lack of safety equipment. You're given a bicycle helmet that protects the top of your head, but nothing to stop you from losing all the skin from your elbows, knees, hands and face should you come a cropper on a tight bend. You see people walking around Rotorua with some horrific facial injuries and they all greet each other with a knowing nod as if to say "aah, street luge!". Having spent the years 1981-1985 with scabby knees from falling over in the playground accidents, I wasn't keen on making contact with the concrete too closely this time and it was this fear that kept me safely on the road.
There's nothing more attractive to a backpacker than something that comes for free, and the cabins that we were staying in included free use of their kayaks at the side of the river. In the afternoon we took them out down the stream and onto Lake Rotorua. The stream was relatively sluggish and calm and navigating it was the easy bit, but when we broke onto the lake the winds had tossed up quite a swell and it became apparent that going out too far wouldn't be a good idea. Lake Rotorua is full of nasty green algae and is also a big contributor to the eggy smell that engulfs the town, so taking an early bath wasn't really on our activity list for that day. We did a hasty U-turn in front of some amused fishermen at the mouth of the river, but the lake gods must have already seen us and decided who amongst us was going for a dip. As we arrived back at the cabins and Sarah tried to get out of out of her kayak she ended up taking a swim. I almost followed, spending what was literally 10 seconds carefully balanced between the muddy bank and a slowly receding kayak, only supported by a few blades of grass clutched in my fingers and my face digging into the mud and duck shit. No more kayaking after that, but we couldnt rest because we had booked tickets to the local Maori Cultural show.
For $80 you can go see a display of the traditional dancing, music and haka from the Mitai tribe whose lands extend into Rotorua. You then get to walk up to their sacred spring, before enjoying an enormous banquet cooked by woodchips and hot stones in an underground oven. Needless to say the tourists love it, and there are a few more Maori millionaires than there used to be. It's a really good way of seeing their ancient traditions and lifestyle, and going back to my previous comment about backpackers loving free stuff it did cost us $80 but the dinner was all-you-can-eat!
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