Today was a quiet day. We started with a walk around the Kuirau Park in central Rotorua. This contains rugby fields, a swimming pool, planted flowers beds and geothermal active areas! Many places in the park are cordoned off behind wooden fences with danger signs, and inside are steaming pools, sulphuric rocks and bubbling mud pools.
It felt quite surreal walking around, with the smell of sulphur always in the air. Various boards around the park gave some of the history, including stories of children swimming in the pools on the way home from school and women bringing their washing down to be done in the hot water.
Some of the mud was really gloopy, and bubbles were surrounded with concentric circles.
After the park we walked round a small section of the Lake Rotorua shoreline, the Sulphur Point. Large areas of sinter (a type of rock) were labelled as dangerous, and again steam was bubbling up throughout the area.
The museum had given us complimentary tickets for today as we had failed to see everything yesterday, so we spent the rest of the morning there, reading about history and then eating lunch.
The drive in the afternoon took us north to the Bay of Plenty region, and to Ohope Beach in particular. This lovely beach showed signs of damage in the recent tropical storm (Pam), but nothing serious. We later learnt that the weather that day was overcast with a slight wind, but the seas had a swell of 4m or more.
After a short wander around the centre of Whatakane (and to allow Mick his daily ice cream) we made our way to our B&B. This is right next to a small lake, in a very suburban part of town, and our little apartment is excellent. We're currently sitting on the terrace enjoying a drink in the evening fresh air.
Tomorrow we are off to White Island hopefully, though we learnt today that the storm destroyed their landing wharf on the island. We should get a phone call soon saying if the trip is on or off, and what time we are leaving!
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