Day 5: Road to Rotorua

We travelled down a lot of the North island today to reach the volcanic region of Rotorua where we are hopefully going to indulge in lots of things volcanic- spas, mud, geysers, mud, helicopter flights, and mud.

We had initially booked at a good sounding hotel with a view of a mud geyser. It took some finding, being not right by the lake as we had thought, but on the far reaches of town. Turns out that the room we were in 'technically' had a view of the geyser, but was 'actually' blocked by trees.

We 'technically' looked elsewhere and are now actually in a hotel right by the lake.
Smashtastic.

The trip down was quite long - about 7 hours or so of driving. The roads are quite rough, with only about 60Km of the 500Km trip being on anything approaching motorways. Still, we have seen some really interesting out-of-town hinterlands with lots of strip malls and large agricultural equipment depots.

The views here so far are breath taking. The lake is gorgeous and there was a fantastic sun set this evening.

Tomorrow we're going to one of the spas - for mud treatments and general lolling, and we may also take a helicopter trip around a volcano.