19/11/05 7pm

Rotorua

Without knowing much about the town, i arrived this town just in time to view the children's day parade.

As i walked along the town, a pungent smell is swirling in the sky and yet everyone seems okey with it. Maybe its just me... Later on when i saw this, i know things are not as simple as i first perceived.
look~ The drain releasing some pungent smell along with obvious smoke flowing out. The smell is so strong that it is visible, just like what i see in the cartoon!! OMG, i should call 911. Wait a second, the smoke and the smell is everywhere~

normally a park will have a blue lake within it and people calmly sitting next to it. Interestingly, this park near the city center has a lake that smells real bad and release lots of smoke. Knowing that i have not done my homework regarding this town, i head off to tourism center to figure out what is it all about..

Turn out that Rotorua is a very unique town in which is has extremely high geothermal activity, so high that literally every single hole you dig will cause a release of sulphur from the land below. So if you choose to stay here, you have to live with the smell.

according to my source, Rotorua is famous for 3 things, the first one is Geyser. A geyser is a hot spring characterized by intermittent discharge of water ejected turbulently and accomplished by a vapor phase. its quite impressive to see the periodical eruption the vapour, besides the fact that i got wet after standing too near the eruption point.

Pahula Geyser

Apparently there's a even famous Geyser that actually have different colour due to the sulphur content and the eruption was as high as 2m. Unluckily, the eruption only happened on 11.27am everyday, which i would have be gone to next town by then.

the 2nd thing Rotorua famous for is spa/bath house.

this is a former bath house call 'Blue Bath' that eventually become a museum. Nothing impressive to be frank, and later i did go the the real bath house to soke in some hot water. Besides the smell, i really cant distinguish the different from the hot shower i would have at home.

The 3rd thing Rotorua famous for is the Maori Cultural heritage. Maybe i have not traveled far enough ever since i got to NZ, but for the first time , i see more Polynesian on the road than Caucasian. There's quite a bit of Maori Cultural show for tourist too in this area. Due to the limitation of the time, i didnt manage to see any cultural show, but i do realise that i should have bring along some egg, because u can almost cook your egg in anywhere.

No joking, people in the past do cook their egg this way....