Auckland - Rotorua - Day 8 in New Zealand

01/31/2014

The alarm clock rings at 7:00 am and I'm at Jucy Car Rental at 7:45 am, which is only 450 meters away from the hotel. I now get a yellow Hyundai Getz, which has 158,000 km on the clock. 158,000 km! You would never find something like this in Germany. Now, Jucy might be the budget brand, but I didn't rent from Rent a Dent or Rent a Wreck, and the car has some dents, a burst seat cushion, and smells like cigarette smoke. The antenna is broken as well as the fuel cap. The lady at Jucy says it doesn't matter because I have comprehensive insurance, so no one will complain when I return the car. Oh well - in that case! They have probably already refinanced the car 7 times with an insurance claim. Unbelievable.

I don't feel like arguing and delaying, and I think it will be fine for three days. The car also lacks the cargo cover, so my luggage is visible in the back. Not nice when parking somewhere and walking around. When refueling, I immediately notice that the fuel cap is missing, the attachment is missing. And it consumes gasoline. By the time I reach Rotorua, which is about 200 km, it has used $45 worth of fuel. A small car with hardly any horsepower, struggling up the hill at 40-50 km/h and using so much fuel?

The drive from Auckland to Rotorua is pretty unremarkable. The landscape could be anywhere in Germany. Gentle hills, greenery, livestock, pastures, fruit stands. Rotorua is known for its sulfur springs and of course for the active earth. At some places, the Earth's crust here is 7 meters thick, normal is 17 km. The search for motels is dumb again. I thought it would be better to search early today because it's the weekend, and I was already in Rotorua at 1:00 pm. An Ibis offers me a room for $185, a Chinese person offers me a room without a window in his crappy motel for $180. When I see a nice motel just 4 meters away, which looks a bit run down and expensive, I'm surprised that it costs only $120. I take the room immediately.

It's nice and spacious and has a bathtub with bubbles. The people are really nice and the lady (Beth) tells me where I can see the mud pools and hot springs for free. Nevertheless, I decide to go to Te Puia and walk around the site, seeing bubbles and smelling sulfur everywhere.

The Pohutu Geyser is nice to look at because it's always bubbling even during the calm phase. I see many unfamiliar flowers and another cicada, which I identified as a cricket at Milford Sound. But here they are winged insects that don't look nice, not grasshoppers!

At the end of the walk, which leads through beautiful paths in nature, you reach a Marae and inside there is a Maori performance. The melodies are fantastic and multi-voiced. They remind me a lot of the South Pacific. Outside, a Maori carves another figure out of a huge tree, of which there are already several in the park.

Rotorua itself is not that great. I drive around with the car and park it behind the Convention Center. Next to it is the venerable Rotorua Museum. This house with its British half-timbered fronts and many gables served as a geothermal bath over 100 years ago, especially for European tourists who had to relax their fragile bones here after a 3-month sea journey. Due to World War I and the declining intensity of travel, a temporary hospital was set up here. It gradually fell into disrepair until the early 1960s when an entrepreneur initiated the renovation and set up an event hall, the Tudor Towers, for around 20 years.

Many bands from all over the world performed in this building, which is considered the most photographed in New Zealand. Now it's just a museum and simply beautiful.

Totally natural picture for the Chinese family album... ;-)))

Directly across from it, there are bubbles again, and then there's a hot spring and next to it a pond with water lilies, where it also bubbles. A few Pukekos, these blue New Zealand birds with red beaks, are walking around in the warm water. I can't imagine that there's anything to eat in this water, or that it's not already cooked. This city is really hot!

The weather is incredibly pleasant with about 24 degrees Celsius, but occasionally mean wind. I go on a path that goes around a bay and is always above sulfur deposits, mud pools, and hot springs. Often just on a wooden pathway and marked with many warnings not to step beside it because the Earth's crust is very thin here. I don't feel like having a roasted leg and I obediently stay on the path.

For dinner, I'm in the city center, then drive to the Blue Lake and Green Lake and to the Buried Village, and I know that tomorrow morning I will ignore the lakes and only drive to the Buried Village. Quickly stop by a forest with huge Redwoods - a real attraction of this area.

What really surprises me is that I see maple trees here that already have autumn leaves. It's only the end of January, after all.

The Redwoods are always nice to look at and fill me with awe. Then refuel, buy water, and back to the hotel, type in the diary, secure pictures, and sleep!

The Baylin Motel in Rotorua

Travel distance: 288 km