Rotorua, New Zealand

Rotorua, New Zealand is freakin’ awesome! It’s a fun little town with so much to do! I guess the locals call it “Rotovegas” for a reason we never really figured out, but I guess I can see that relative to all the other places we’ve been in NZ. Once we picked up a rental car, we drove three hours from Auckland to our hotel in Rotorua that we booked a few days earlier (found the cheapest/best place we could find). Luckily Tyson slept most of the way…since we pulled our secret parenting trick. We’ve figured out that giving him a little box of raisins (sultanas) is just like giving him a sleeping pill with a 2 minute timer. He’ll get halfway through the pack and then fall asleep with the box still fully clasped in his hands. When he wakes up, he doesn’t even fuss, he just keeps eating the box of raisin then plays with his toys. Pretty sweet! We’ll see how long that lasts, haha.

As soon as we got to our hotel I stepped out of the car and smelled something raunchy and thought Marshall or Tyson ripped a big one…then we saw a huge cloud come up from the ground a few hundred feet in front of us. We kept driving and it kept getting bigger and bigger and we realized it was a geyser erupting in the middle of town! Awesome!! We drove past it and watched for a bit then circled back to find our hotel after it calmed down. It turns out that this town is full of Sulphur (hence the smell) due to it being full of geothermal activity. Pretty sweet (sounding), but REALLY gross (smelling).

After we dropped our bags off in the hotel and closed all the windows to keep the smell out, we headed over to the nearby extreme activity park. We’re in New Zealand, why the heck not. We drove up the side of a hill and parked near the start of a gondola that takes you to the top of a hill that has all kinds of activities at the top. When we got to the top we first saw a huge swing that takes you you super high into the sky then drops you to swing for a few minutes. Looked fun, but we passed. We did find a trail next to the swing though that had lots of beautiful cherry blossoms. After taking a nice stroll and a ton of pictures we walked over to do the sweet luge course which is long and windy with amazing views of the lake on the way down to the bottom of them massive hill. Tyson sat on Marshall’s lap and I rode down by myself…don’t worry we didn’t drive too fast (the 8 year olds were flying by us, lol). When we got to the bottom of the course we had to take a ski lift type chair back to the top of the hill then get back on the gondola to take us down to our car. On the way back to our hotel we stopped at the grocery store to pick up a few things and then made spaghetti for dinner and hit the hay after that long and really fun day.

The next morning we drove over to a big geothermal park to stroll around in. It’s a free park in the middle of the city that anyone can walk around and we were happily surprised. There were a ton of spots that had steaming, colored water and bubbling mud. It’s actually very similar to Yellowstone National Park, but a lot less….Yellowstoney(???). Pretty awesome, but nothing beats the good ol’ U.S. of A. When we got done looking at bubbling mud, we jumped back in the car and drove into town to look for something else to do. We strolled around downtown and found a nice little ice cream shop at the end of the street. I got a mocha shake and Tyson got a vanilla ice cream cone with sprinkles. He was in heaven trying to eat the little sprinkles and deal with the coldness…well that was until Marshall went in for a bite and accidentally licked all the ice cream on to the ground! Ooops. Tyson had plenty at that point and didn’t really care, especially since he could still eat the cone.

Once he was finished, we cleaned up and turned the corner to see the most amazing thing any kid has ever seen…ever…in the history of kid-ness. A FAIR WAS IN TOWN!!!!!! We all got super excited and walked over to check out all the rides. It hadn’t opened yet since it was still morning, but we had to scope it out to see what they had. An employee walked by and we found out it opened in a few hours, so we decided to walk to the nearby playground to distract Tyson and figure out a game plan to come back and dominate the park later on.

The playground was next to a huge lake so once Tyson was done playing we strolled along the riverside to check out the views. When we got down to the lake we looked out into the abyss and saw something we couldn’t believe….it looked like….the lockness monster on the lake! OK, it wasn’t that dramatic, but we saw something that seriously looked like it out there. Then we heard a squawk, looked down and saw about 10 black swans swimming around us. We’d never seen a black swan before so we were pretty amazed. There were also tons of other little white birds (there version of seagulls) that Tyson loved chasing around.

After watching the birds and a few helicopter tours take off in the distance we’d worked up an appetite, so we walked back to the town and stopped in a restaurant called Fat Dog. This place, like many other restaurants in Australia and New Zealand, requires you to order and pay at the front when you walk in. I actually like this concept because when you’re done eating you can just peace out and not have to wait for your bill. Why hasn’t the U.S picked up on this?? Seriously, who wants to wait around after you’ve finished just to pay, we have to streamline people.

Later that afternoon we drove over to a town that the visitor center recommended we visit for the ‘interesting architecture’. There wasn’t really anything there to be honest, just a residential area  from what we could see but it was interesting to see several houses that had steam coming from their backyards. Could you imaging dealing with the stench coming out of the hole in the ground in your yard directly into your windows all day and night? How would you deal with your own stink emergency after an Italian garlic fueled evening? Open a window? I don’t think so! Anywho, not for me…so we left…
We continued driving over to another spot the visitor center recommended. It’s a portion of the water that most of that smell comes from. Most of the shoreline is a milky white color from all of the geothermal activity in the area. Apparently, it’s where most of it occurs in the area. It was a fascinating site to see the milky white color transition into the traditional blue water, although Tyson only noticed all the sticks on the ground that he was determined to collect. We hung out for a bit, then we headed back into town to check out the Fair.

We were all amazed walking in since we hadn’t been to a small town fair like this since we were kids. We first took some time to walk around and reminisce with all the rides we used to go on as kids. We watched a few people try the ‘sucker games’ that cost an arm and a leg and have about a 0% chance of paying out. Once we were starting to feel sorry for those still sitting there trying to win crappy toys, we took Tyson over to the huge yellow slide, you know the ones you use a potato sack to go down?!? We bought some tickets and walked up the long, steep, sketchy stair case. After dodging loose wires and sheered metal poking out along the way, we made it to the top and threw our sacks on the slide. Tyson hopped on Marshall’s lap and we all went down at the same time. It was so fast and had a lot of bumps that I’m not sure who it scared most, but I know we had a lot of fun.

After that we took Tyson on the merry go round which he absolutely loved we decided to call it a night and get some dinner. We walked through the town and found a pub that had a good vibe and was playing live music. We walked in and decided to sit right in front of the lady playing on her guitar. We ordered some delicious food then Tyson started dancing along with the music in the middle of the restaurant. As usual, every time a song would end he would start clapping and look around until everyone else was clapping along with him. The singer was getting a kick out of his cuteness (as were we) and was playing songs she thought he’d like and dance along to. She did such a great job entertaining Tyson that he handed her a nice big tip as we were leaving, lol.

Tomorrow we are driving two hours west to our next destination.
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Next Stop: Waitomo, New Zealand