I've just spent a few days in Rotorua, and I can assure you there are few places on earth like it! It's right in the middle of North Island and is famous for its geothermal activity! In the photo that's a sulphur lake behind me, constantly hissing and steaming with heat and gas from the centre of the earth!
A friend and I rented a little place on Lake Rotorua for a few days - that's the second largest lake in New Zealand. Just to confirm that, the name 'rotorua' means "second largest lake" ..from 'roto' meaning lake and 'rua', two...so imaginative!
The lake itself is actually a crater from the Tarawera eruption, rivers and streams flow into it & so it is now a lake, covered with ducks and black swans and with occasional islands in the middle.
You can see Mokoia island in this photo here, which is the view from our Lodge. The island is actually a rhyolite dome - a big volcanic rock similar to granite, that erupted out and fell back into the crater to make the island (pretty big piece of rock to be flying around if you ask me!)
Basically you can smell Rotorua before you get there - it's a rotten egg smell from the sulphur fumes which are emitted from the lakes and the ground, it's a constant boiling, seething landmass, which brings alive the fact that the city sits over a caldera. Its nickname is 'Sulphur City'.
It's very popular with tourists because of its thermal pools, sulphur baths and mud bathing - sort of a new Zealand equivalent of a spa, but set out in the open above a possible volcanic eruption amongst scenery that resembles Mars or somewhere like that!
You begin with a walk around the 'park' with bubbling lakes, steaming fumaroles, boiling mud pools and hissing vents coming out of the ground and the most wonderful safety signs - like this one!
It also has the largest hot waterfall in the Southern hemisphere - imagine sitting under that! Everything has a strong sulphur smell and if you stop to think for a moment you realize the enormity of what must be happening under your very feet!
So, we had booked a mud pool and sulphur bath at a place called Hell's Gate (appropriately named when you see it!) The mud bath was interesting andvery hot! We got covered in the grey mud (the white mud is for face packs and the black mud is too hot to bathe in)
From the mud pool you move to the sulphur baths which have healing properties and go up in degrees of hotness - I didn't make the hottest one!
then I walked around Sulphur Bay where hundreds of birds were coming in for the night - the noise was deafening.
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