We started our second day in Rotorua early as we were hitting two popular tourist sights that required a bit of a drive. First up, it was Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland. Beware, there is quite the rotten egg smell throughout the park given that it's an active geothermal area. To be honest though, you get used to the smell quite quickly that you hardly notice it after a while. It's a fairly large park with a variety of colourful and interesting hotsprings and boiling mudpools. Definitely worth a visit and you'll have plenty of photographic opportunities. One of the special attractions is the Lady Knox Geyser that shoots up to heights of 10 to 20 metres. Some of my favourite images from the north island was actually taken here at Wai-O-Tapu.
After a quick and simple lunch at the cafeteria, we hurried along towards Hobbiton for our late afternoon movie set tour. This was one of the highlights of the North Island road trip. If I was honest, it was really the main reason for going to the North Island! It wasn't cheap but it was worth the visit! it was fun to see several iconic hobbit holes, the stories before the set and also the stories associated with the Lord of the Ring Movies. They really tried to maintain the set and props well, to make you feel like hobbits are currently living in the village. Ending at the Green Dragon Inn and having a drink in a medieval set was pretty neat as well.
It was a big day of driving around the region, but we did make it back to Rotorua with some late afternoon light left in the day. Something that I found I was in frequent awe at is how picturesque New Zealand was. the rolling hills, the beautiful light. After we freshened up at home, we heated back out into town to look for dinner. We ended up at Eat Streat, which is one of Rotorua's hot spots with plenty of restaurants, cafes and bars. We came across a stonegrill restaurant called CBK. We were keen to try out stonegrilled meat and we weren't disappointed.
That finishes up day 2 of Rotorua. Next up, we spend our last morning in Rotorua exploring the Redwood Forest before heading to Rotorua airport to fly to our next stop! Thanks for stopping by today.
Your friend,
Janice