I Do Love The Smell of Sulpher in the Morning - Rotorua, New Zealand

The town of Rotorua is pretty much in the middle of the geothermal activity zone, with number of geysers, lots of hot springs and mud pools in a park across the road from our hostel causing the whole town to smell like rotten eggs. In the morning we decided to check that we were booked on the bus to Auckland the following day but when we rang up we found out that there was no bus going to Auckland on the day that we wrote on the booking sheet before going to Waitomo meaning that we had to spend another day in Rotorua, not ideal.

Although the weather looked pretty ominous we decided that we would do a walking tour of the city which started at the Museum, where we both decided that we had seen enough museums for the time being and it also wasn't free. From the museum we doubled back on ourselves heading through Princes Gate, a Maori structure that was moved there a few years back, and heading down towards the lake. We then followed the lake all the way to an old Maori village which had a pretty impressive meeting hall and other Maori carved statues. We then got a little lost and ended up walking through the hospital which we figured out was just across the road from our hostel and as our next stop was to check out the springs which meant we didn't deviate too far from the tour. There were quite a few springs in the park, one of note was actually hidden away a little bit but was the main contributor of the gas so much so that it was hard to actually see the water in it. The walking tour finished at the information centre after which we went to subway to read a few leaflets that we picked up at the information centre, as well as seeing to the hunger problem.

The rest of the day we spent in the hostel and in the evening we went for a drink with Lee and Lindsey the couple that we went on the caving tour with.