Rotorua

From Okahune we went north to Rotorua, the tourism capital of the North Island. On the way there we squeezed in a quick stop at a place we just had to visit. We had been given a hand drawn map and explicit instructions from Kirstie and Johann. This was the mud pools at Wai-o-tapu . Near by is what can only be described as a geothermal theme park, a much more famous attraction but even lonely planet called it a little over commercial so we were happy to go with the free option.

We both tend to get a little over excited by mud pools. They're just so fab, particularly the really thick gloopy ones.


Lovely bubbling pics from Clairy.


This one looks disturbingly like a muddy fist punching out of the boiling depths.


At the far end of the pools there was a huge amount of activity going on.


These two vents in particular were very active.




Clairy got this great vid. You can really here the noise of it all. Just try and ignore the noisy child in the background.






We reached Rotorua later in the day and Clairy got this lovely shot of the sun going down over Kuirau Park. Its an incredibly geothermally active park, right in the centre of town. Its most recent eruption in 2003 covered most of the park, including the trees in mud. The place is also known as Sulphur Town, quite understandably I might add, but you get used to the smell fairly quickly.


Rotorua was quite a unique place with a high (over 35%) Maori population and a huge amount of stuff for cashed up tourists to do. The tourist leaflet stands here were absolutely groaning under the weight of the vast amount of things you could occupy your time with. We nearly did a Maori cultural show, but in the end they just seemed a little too contrived and commercial (they were also all pretty pricey).

Later in the evening after we had got set up at a fairly average holiday park on the outskirts of town we decided we would visit the Kiwi Encounter at the nearby Rainbow Springs wildlife centre. After reading up about it we found that this was one of a few locations where kiwis are hand reared and taught survival skills before being released into the wild. At that point they are large enough to be able to defend themselves from the non-native predators (stoats and possums) that cause such serious problems to eggs and young in the wild.

We arrived quite late in the evening as the owner of our holiday park had informed us that the strange little birds only come out to forage just as the sun goes down. Unfortunately the night we were there was a fund raising evening for the kiwi repatriation program where you could get in to the wildlife park for a gold coin (NZ$1 or $2) donation. This meant the place was absolutely heaving.

On our first pass through the kiwi enclosure there were piles of people but not a hint of any kiwis. We carried on round and checked out some of the other native wildlife. We saw the morepork (a native owl), another noisy kaka, the scaup ducks (diving black ducks) and a pool of light blue trout that were the result of a rare genetic abnormality.

By this point it had got pretty dark so we made our way back to the kiwi enclosure. There were still hordes of people, and everyone seemed even more excited if that was possible as the kiwis were now out and about. They really are the most bizarre things. On our journey round the park we had read some information boards that informed us that there are actually a whole range of different species of kiwi, from tiny ones to much larger birds.

The enclosure was divided into four fenced off sections, each with one kiwi in. The fence between the public and each section was only a couple of foot high though so when they were near, you could almost touch them. The ones that we saw scurrying around were much bigger than we had imagined, probably about the size of a large chicken. They were super active, scurrying around digging their long beaks into the earth to smell for food (they have an amazing sense of smell and nostrils at the very end of their beaks).

They are apparently not the scared tiny things that we imagine them to be and are quite brazen and confident once large enough to look after themselves and out and about at night. I have to say we were quite glad about this, because as usual there were some particularly idiotic people around doing incredibly stupid things. Various people tried to touch them. One chap insisted on trying to film one of the kiwis with his camcorder light on practically blinding the poor thing and all around him, and we just felt very sorry for them having to endure the general public. Having said that, they didn't seem to bothered, getting on with what you imagine them to be doing in the wild, and the place is obviously doing some good things for the species as a whole. After getting some totally black photos we couldn't really deal with the people around us so we headed off, but I'm glad we got a proper look at this prehistoric looking funny little bird.

The next morning we headed back to try and get a shot of Clairy riding a kiwi bareback on the top quality model outside the kiwi encounter. She got some great looks from passers by (this was right on the main road), but that may have been more down to accidental exposure due to her dress riding up while she tried to grip on! Great pic though.


After that exciting start to the day we had a quick look round the town and Clairy snapped this pic of a particularly well presented coffee.