29/06/2010 Rotorua

Not sure what is going on with the dates in my note pad, I know I was here for 2 days, but w/e I'll sort that out later.

29/06/2010 Rotorua
Today had a leisurely time getting up as bus to Rotorua left at 11am so not enough time to get anywhere. I spent a bit of time hanging around the giftshop waiting. I ended up buying a fill in the blank post card which seemed to perfectly fit my desire to put little effort into communication.

Then it was on to a 2hr trim through ridiculously lush green rolling fields. Despite all that I ended up nodding off for about half a trip. Which seems to be some sort of problem I’ve picked up, I’ve fallen asleep in pretty much every bus I’ve gotten into .

Once in Rotorua I tried to set up my plans for the place. It is known for hot pools and thermal activity but those tend to get sillily expensive as the people there charge exorbitant rates just for looking at them. While I’m certainly willing to part with exorbitant sums of cash, see the 7hr extravaganza, but not so much for thermal springs that I’ve probably seen similar or better examples of in Yellowstone. So I was trying to focuses on the history and culture. Then I learnt that it had a tour of Hobbiton, so I had to jump at that. Apparently the set was mostly taken down by the movie compagny who had agreed to put the famer’s land back to it’s orgininal state. Then the rains came and so the people had to stop because of the mud. Then people came to ask about the set over the course of a year, so the farmers asked if they could keep the set. I also had to sign some sort of nondisclosure paper about not posting pictures on the internet, so I’m not going to go anyfurther with that on the blog.

And then I learnt that there was a Kiwi exhibit. Apparently this place had an eruption last time around 1820ish that resulted in the burial of a village.

Apparently this region was the first place to make a big tourism hit by having the pink and white terraces. Those were destroyed by the eruption. Then the place became a big hit when people were marketing it as a place with good waters for “hydropathy” apparently the mix of waters with both acid and base was a big draw.