Then in mid April, when the school holiday had started, we took a longer trip to both Rotorua and Taupo to see some volcanoes.

Oh the smells

Rotorua is certainly a special experience, where the volcanoes announce themselves not necessarily by sight, as in Taupo, but by their smell (which, by the way, we didn’t get used to…). There are also a lot of places where steam rises up from the earth – it’s actually kind of difficult to decide which park to visit. We walked around Rotorua itself where they have a free public park with hot water running into steaming ponds, and we visited Te Puia and Waiotapu in the days after. Both parks are good examples of how the Māori population is gradually getting back some rights. The land of Te Puia itself was transferred to two local iwi (or tribes) in 2009 and last year the business itself was also transferred, so it is now fully owned and run by Māori.

A taste of Māori culture

Te Puia was special because of the geyser that erupts 30m in the sky and we also saw a kiwi there (in their shelter where it was completely dark – they are night animals). We saw lots of carving and weaving up close in the Māori Arts & Crafts Institute, where you need to have 1% of Māori blood to be allowed as a student. We also got a taste of Māori culture with a traditional welcome ceremony including the famous haka and a hāngī buffet (from a traditional underground steam oven). It was cool to see the hāngī in the thermal landscape as well as the natural hot pool that they also used to cook their food in – it was just hot water bubbling away in a pool of about 2 meters across, and they would lower the food, in some cloth or a flax basket, into the water and there you go!

Colours and a floatplane

The next day we went to Waiotapu, which is spectacular with its different colours. It also has a geyser which they make erupt every morning at 10.15am by putting some soap in the vent – fun to see, but much less spectacular than the one at Te Puia. Then we went onto Taupo, where some bad weather unfortunately hit us. Happily, we were able to move our floatplane ride forward, so we got to still see the volcanoes from the sky – even though Ngauruhu (or Mount Doom) was hiding in the clouds. Amazing views!

Soaking away

And the great thing about being in this area is that there is hot water in abundance. Our accommodation in both Rotorua and Taupo had heated pools (of different sizes) and we also found some good spots in nature where the hot water just came out of the rocks! I loved the place we found close to Waiotapu – a quiet spot where hot water flowed into a stream, and there were some pools made out of rocks, one even with the perfect rock shelve to sit on. But probably the best place, according to the kids at least, was the hot tub we rented in the forest, because there you could order a drink at the press of a button!