Got up and had a slow start, grabbing a quick coffee to wake me up a bit before we headed out to wander around Rotorua. If the coffee hadn’t already woken me, the not-so-friendly smell of Rotorua would certainly have done the trick!
The hostel was close enough to the town for us to walk, so we ambled down to the main stretch and strolled up and down the roads, looking at the shops. I was surprised to realise that actually it seemed that there were more shops in Rotorua than there were in Auckland on Queens Street! They also had an incredible number of tat shops, which I revelled in. I found the ‘Farmers’ which is NZ’s closest thing to a Debenhams, and was amazed at how big it was, so had a good look in there – not that I was actually ‘shopping’ per se, more just perusing.
After a spot of lunch, we had a mooch about some of the other shops, including a ‘Warehouse Extra’ which was rather exciting as it had ‘Extra’ – this meant it was just a very big ‘Warehouse’. It’s hard to equate Warehouse to a UK equivalent, maybe a bit like a Woolworths (as we knew it) or Wilkos. Cheap and cheerful, but selling more or less absolutely everything you can imagine.
Once we were all shopped out, we found the information centre and had a look at the suggested walks. We found one that looked vaguely interesting, which would take us on a little tour of some of the ‘cultural heritage’ sites. Handily, the trail started outside the i-site and the map told us a bit about the things we were passing by.
The first thing we came to on the trail were the Prince’s Gate Arches, which we’d noticed earlier on and had commented that they looked unusual. They were made of wood and had been erected in 1901 and their unusual shape was meant to represent the crown. There was an interesting fence around the arches with Maori carvings sat on the posts. We then came to a set of ornamental ponds and gardens which looked like they might be more ornamental during the summer months – I’d say in the winter they aren’t particularly attractive!
There was a lovely ‘band rotunda’ nearby which really made me feel like I was in England; it really reminded me of the bandstand in Fassnidge Park, only a bit smaller and without drunken tramps or chavs hanging about under it! Around the gardens were other little buildings, like the tea house and small pavilions, all very decorative and reminiscent of cute, old fashioned English buildings. The Bath House was another beautiful, old building, from 1908 and was one of the first spas in Rotorua. It looked out onto croquet lawns and bowls greens and their respective pavillions, again, making this setting seem really English. In contrast to this, close to the Bath House we found a large totem pole, nothing Maori this time, instead it was a gift to NZ from Canada. It looked quite out of place next to everything else.
Not far away from the baths we came to Rachel Pool, a natural hot spring. The water bubbled away frantically and huge clouds of steam emanated from it. The water used to be pumped to the Bath House for use in their spa; free hot water! I was really tempted to dip my foot in, but figured that I would probably be likely to get severely burnt! We then came to another area of hot springs where steam was being churned out – in fact there was so much steam, it was hard to see what was underneath and how big the pool was!
Once we’d completed the loop and arrived back at the beginning of the trail, we decided to head to ‘Pak N Save’ and get something for dinner. On the way back to the hostel, I was more than bemused about some of the road markings, on several of the crossings, it really looked like whoever had drawn the white lines had been as drunk as a skunk! We then cooked a chicken curry and managed to hog the tv so we could watch CNN news (about the UK general election) and some random US tv shows whilst enjoying a dessert of hokey pokey (vanilla ice-cream with bits of honeycomb in it – an icon of NZ apparently!).
No comments:
Post a Comment