23RD - 25TH MARCH

After a pretty long drive from Parakai, we arrived in Rotarua, and immediately got a feel for the place. As we drove in on the main road past the park, a huge cloud of steam came through the trees and almost obscured the road in front of us!! There was also a pretty strong sulphur smell, which we recognised from Taiwan! In any other circumstance it would be a really unpleasant smell, but I guess that as it‘s natural it seems ok!! We had a look for places to stay at the visitor centre, and just picked a campsite which was by the lake and was the cheapest. Hmmm, bit of a mistake!! All the accommodation in Rotarua has hot spa pools, even the campsites, and this one advertised a big spa pool, as well as private ones which you could control the temperature yourself, all for free. When we came to look at them though, they were badly neglected, with peeling paint, lots of mineral deposits, and generally in need of refurbishment. The toilets and camp kitchen were not so much better,

although to be fair they were in the process of being refurbished! The other problem we discovered was the masses of flies where our van was parked. Unfortunately though, we’d already paid before checking all this out - a mistake we wouldn’t make again!! They did have free kayaks though, so we had a quick paddle in the lake, but it was a very old and hard to manoeuvre kayak, and it started raining!! As a result our paddle was fairly short lived, so we checked out the spa pools instead. For all their scruffiness the water was very nice, and didn‘t half make our skin feel amazingly soft, instant girly skin!! J After our bathe, we decided that the flies were so bad that cooking wasn’t a good idea, as they’d all be in the van - so the local chippy supplied us with some hearty food instead!! The campsite slightly redeemed itself by having wireless internet, so we decided to check out our ferry to the South Island. We had been told that it would cost us $210 each way, so we were quite pleased to get