Rotorua - smelly but beautiful

We bid farewell to the city of sails, Auckland, yesterday and headed south to the area of the central north island of New Zealand.  This area sits atop New Zealand's active thermal area.  Hot springs, geysers, mud pools, etc. are all in this area.  Rotorua - where we stopped yesterday - is also a center of the Maori culture in New Zealand.  It took us about 3-4 hours to get here yesterday.

NZ Highways and country side

K and I picked up a rental car in downtown Auckland yesterday to use for the rest of our trip.  It had to be the cleanest Hertz facility I have ever seen.  You could have eaten off the garage floor.  Here is our car outside of Rotorua.  That image is not flipped, the steering wheel is on the right.

K was our driver and I was the navigator.  K did great driving on the left-hand side of the road.  Except for the windshield wiper coming on and an expletive announced whenever she wanted to signal, she did great managing everything in the car on the opposite side.

Not afraid to tackle the streets/highways of the world, we have done a lot of foreign "road trips" in our travels.  We've seen good and poor, and I am happy to say that the NZ highway system is wonderful.  It is very clean and well marked.  Unlike in many places in America, no trash on the highways and even the commercial signage is minimal - allowing the views and beauty of the country to shine.  It was also a gorgeous day to travel (about 72 degrees with no clouds).  Below are some of the photos from our trip to give you a sense of the roads and countryside we traveled.  {Apologize if some of the pictures are a little blurry - they were taken from a moving car - don't worry Mom - K was driving].

The area below Auckland is largely farm land - specifically a lot of cattle/sheep/dairy farms.  The area reminded K and I again of areas in California or other parts of the western US.

Even the roadside stops - sometimes the scourge of US highways - were a pleasure to stop at.  We had breakfast at one where the morning quiche and cappuccino would beat any Starbucks shop.

I had recently read Fareed Zakaria's book The Post-American World.  An excellent book, in which he talks about America's future and why it still has a chance to be a leader in the world in the future if it makes the right moves.  One of the reasons was American culture and how much of the world is still attracted to it.  Probably no better cultural representation than our fast food restaurants and jeans Zakaria explained.  Proof positive of our biggest export here in NZ was found in our approach to Hamilton (a city south of Auckland).  Pretty much looks like a street in the US doesn't it.

There were a couple of places where Subway, McDonalds, Wendys, and KFC were all about a stone's through from each other.

There are some interesting little stops on the way.  We had a coffee at a café in Tirua where we sat outside this tourist information center.  Yep - that's a dog made of corrugated steel (a product made in the area).  No - I cannot explain why.  Every country has its kitschy.

As we started to approach Rotorua, there were more forests and hills.  The last picture in this set shows the descent into Rotorua and the lake it is famous for (more on this below).

The only issue we had during our travel is several slow downs for construction and road resurfacing.  Probably more than a dozen sections on our way down to Rotorua.  I asked our hotel manager about that when we got to Rotorua.  He indicated that the end of year for NZ funds was March - so a lot of regions were expending their last funds.  Politics and government funding are the same in every country.  Use it or lose it in the next year.



Rotorua

Rotorua is, as I said, at the heart of thermal activity and Maori culture in NZ.  We attended a Maori dinner and show last evening (more on that later).  We spent the day checking out the city.  Because of the proximity to thermal vents, it smells like sulfur - thus the title to this post.  Rotorua is a little touristy.  K initially wanted to do Zorbing.  Zorbing is getting into a air-filled bubble and rolling downhill.  We pulled over to check it out.  After finding out it was also a water filled bubble, K was not so interested.

So instead, we did go up a gondola that took you to the top of a hill overlooking the city.  The views were spectacular.  Rotorua sits on Lake Rotorua.  This is the crater lake of a past volcano.  The island in the center of the lake is considered sacred and holy ground (as is a lot of this area) to Maori.  Here are just a few of the pictures.

From the top, you can take "luge" carts down.  So we had to do our one touristy thing.  Here we are.

I want to report on Rotorua and our cultural dinner, but we are packing up and heading out for the day to Taupo.  So more later.