In the end, we made it all the way down to Rotorua on Wednesday (400kms), as Cambridge was of little note. There’s so much geothermal activity in the ground that most of Rotorua gently steams all the time, with hot, bubbling mud streams, active geysers and natural thermal spas everywhere. We visited Te Puia to see the biggest and most active geyser in the area and also caught a traditional Maori concert too. Seeing the Haka performed close up was quite an experience, but I managed to narrowly avoid getting dragged up on stage to learn the moves. Next we took a look at the zorbing (basically, rolling down a big hill in a giant beach ball). We wanted to have a go but decided $45NZ was too much for 10 seconds of action. So, instead, we went to the Pig & Whistle pub and enjoyed the local beers and wines.
After a couple of nights in Rotorua, we headed down to Taupo. Taupo is a small town on the edge of NZ’s biggest lake. Again, there’s loads of stuff to do here: sky diving, bungy jumping, fly fishing, watersports, golf horse trekking, quad biking, in fact, just about everything you can think of. Unfortunately, it rained pretty solidly for nearly 48 hours, which put many of the afore mentioned things out of the question. We went down to Haku falls, which was pretty cool and then for a walk down by the lake and then, somehow, we ended up I the pub again. We had our first visitor in the camper today (see photos).
We’re now down in Napier on the east coast. Napier was completely destroyed in the 1930s buy an earthquake and was rebuilt entirely in the art deco style (the museum tells the story superbly). This is the biggest wine producing region in NZ and so we are hoping to go on a tour of some of the wineries tomorrow. This is best done by bike (for obvious reasons) but depending on the weather we may have to pay for transport.
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