Living the Good Life: Rotorua Continued

After a good sleep in our beauty campervan, we got ourselves together and headed out to Wai-O-Tapu. Sculptured out of volcanic activity, Wai-O-Tapu is one of New Zealand’s most colourful and diverse geothermal sightseeing attractions. We walked around for hours, there is so much stuff to see within the park

The Champagne Pool- my favourite thing at Wai-O-Tapu

Lake Ngakoro (means "the grandfather" in Maori) is a beautiful emerald green. Here you can see the hot murky water mixing with the cold.

Orange lichen all over the trees

Sulphur Cave

Oyster Pool

Bubbling Mud Pools

The Lady Knox Geyser

The Devil's Bath

It was raining most of the morning, so we decided to do a canopy tour. It said on the brochure that the forest looked the best in the rain. We headed over to the canopy tours headquarters and got geared up, then they took us out into the forest. The tour consisted of hiking tracks, swing bridges and lots of ziplines! So much fun. Here are some pics and a video.

Clipping Jared on

Traipsing through the forest

Ziplining!

While on the walk we learned a lot about the native birds and how bad the possums, rats and ferrrets are for them. Part of our ticket price went to conservation efforts and this made me quite happy. The forest we went through had only been toured for 8 weeks, it was so untouched and pristine. There were lots of Rimu trees- some of these trees are over 600 years old, and the seeds that planted them were possibly carried there by moa. The moa is an extinct bird that was over 12 ft tall and looked like an enormous ostrich.

After that we were all ziplined-out and soaking wet so we headed back to camp. We bbq'd some steaks & veggies and went for a hot-tub. There was a very charming drunk Kiwi woman in there with her two high-school aged kids. Nothing but class.

The next morning we went out to the WaiOra Spa for a mud bath. My inner mud-kid came out and I covered myself and Jared with mud.

After a freezing cold shower and then a relaxing soak in the hot pools we headed back into Rotorua. Oh, I almost forgot- when they tell you don't get any of the water or mud in your eyes because it contains sulphuric acid- believe them! My eyes were burning so bad all the way back to Rotorua and while we were having lunch in the van. They finally stopped watering and we could continue with our adventures.
We headed out to Tikitapu and Rotokakahi, or as we call them Blue and Green lakes. There are about 10 lakes in the Rotorua district, all created from volcanic activity.