{"id":11728,"date":"2012-11-16T10:51:21","date_gmt":"2012-11-16T10:51:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/?p=11728"},"modified":"2012-11-14T12:05:14","modified_gmt":"2012-11-14T12:05:14","slug":"rotorua-and-hot-pools-again-new-zealand-day-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.alananna.co.uk\/blog\/2012\/11\/rotorua-and-hot-pools-again-new-zealand-day-18\/","title":{"rendered":"Rotorua and Hot Pools Again – New Zealand Day 18"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seeing as we enjoyed the hot pools and the campsite at Waikite Valley so much and we were a day or two ahead of our itinerary anyway thanks to the mad drive from Paihia to Whitianga<\/a> last week, we decided to spend another night at the Waikite Campsite. Not only would that mean we didn’t have to look for a campsite tonight but it meant no long drives and we had a base for the day. Rotorua was only 30 minutes up the road so the plan for the day was to head to the main tourist attraction of Te Puia in Rotorua.<\/p>\n

According to their website, “Te Puia is the premier M\u00c4\u0081ori cultural centre in New Zealand – a place of gushing waters, steaming vents, boiling mud pools and spectacular geysers.” We aren’t usually too keen on commercialised visitor attractions but as it’s the biggest of its kind in New Zealand we felt obliged to visit.<\/p>\n

We started the day however with breakfast in the camper and a nice relaxing soak in the hot pools at Waikite<\/a> – We were\u00a0getting\u00a0used to this pampered, relaxed and chilled out lifestyle by now. Whilst doing so we found an\u00a0interesting moth. It was floating in the main pool and looking a little worse for wear but was still alive and I think we managed to rescue it, dry it out and revive it. It’s a Puriri Moth (Aenetus virescens<\/em>), the largest of New Zealands moths and quite a nice looking moth too. It has an interesting life-cycle as well,\u00a0spending the first five to six years of its life as a grub in a tree trunk, and then only spending the last 48 hours of its life as a moth. We may have rescued it but I guess it didn’t have long left anyway.<\/p>\n

\"Puriri<\/a>

Puriri Moth<\/p><\/div>\n

Te Puia<\/h1>\n

After our soak in the pools we hung our kit in the drying room and headed off towards Rotorua as planned. As we approached, we came across Te Puia, our tourist attraction for the day, so parked in the huge car park and made our way through the tunnel towards the entrance.<\/p>\n

\"Te<\/a>

Te Puia Entrance<\/p><\/div>\n

It’s not cheap to get in, but we paid the admission fees and entered via the turn-styles. Te Puia is a huge visitor attraction and has all the usual trappings of such a destination. Cafes, shops, information boards, guided tours, exhibitions and loads of Japanese people wielding cameras and snapping photos of themselves stood next to everything. And I mean everything, sculptures, canoes, geysers, notice boards, rubbish bins, toilet blocks, random bits of scenery, staff on quad bikes and ‘slippery when wet’ signs, they even pushed us out of the way of the things we were looking at so that they could take photos of themselves making fake poses. Kind of annoying and a little rude at times too.<\/p>\n

We wandered around the site which has paths weaving in and out of the natural attractions which include geysers, mineral rich pools, bubbling mud pools, sulphurous vents and silica deposits.<\/p>\n

\"Te<\/a>

Te Puia<\/p><\/div>\n

We first checked out a replica Maori village and then wandered off to look at the geothermal features.<\/p>\n

\"Maori<\/a>

Maori Village<\/p><\/div>\n

We couldn’t quite get our tongues around pronouncing this though.<\/p>\n

\"Say<\/a>

Say What?<\/p><\/div>\n

Pohutu Geyser<\/h1>\n

The Pohutu geyser is the main attraction and it was erupting when we first saw it. Unfortunately is was our first grey day since touring around the North Island of New Zealand so the whitish water of the erupting geyser against the whitish grey skies it wasn’t very photogenic whilst we were there. Pohutu, means big splash or explosion, and erupts up to 30 metres high, depending on her mood – Today it was probab;y only 10-15 metres high. It is the largest active geyser in New Zealand and the southern hemisphere.<\/p>\n

\"Geyser<\/a>

Geyser Spout<\/p><\/div>\n

\"Geyser<\/a>

Geyser and Silica Deposits<\/p><\/div>\n

The bubbling mud pools were nice to see and we decided that the little bubbles of mud should be called ‘glumps’. Capturing photos of them in action isn’t as easy as it would seem though.<\/p>\n\n\t\t