Rottingrua and Taupo

Rotorua is know as a 'thermal village' or 'sulphur-rich town' because the whole place is on-top of an active volcano crater making everything of liquid consistency 'geothermal'.  It's really cool in that there are walled pools in the middle of the street that steam and bubble all day, and loads of active lakes and ponds that are pretty to visit. There's even drains and pot holes dotted about the town that randomly start smoking.. I mean the ground is literally steaming like a kettle and people just step around it un phased!  Wery strangey. 

But as cool as the thermal stuff is, and it is something that you should definitely see, its sulphur.. Which means it stinks... Real bad... All the time.  Sometimes just a wee whiff in the air, but other times it feking wreaks and it's hard to discretely cover your nasal while trying not to offend the locals that live happily amongst the stench.  

Admittedly I had only one day here and there are loads of beautiful must sees around the town, but all in all it was a kind of surreal and dated place that ponged quiiiiiiiiite a lot!

Taupo is maybe an hour down the road and is too a town surrounding a massive lake, but it was more a travellers destination I'd say.

Here there are natural hot pools that you can just go swim in and these are next to a beautiful river that leads one way to Huka waterfalls and the other to the lake itself, where you can do all kinds of water sports and boat trips out to little islands etc.

The weather was not on my side here which sucked for lake and mountain visibility, or for doing any extreme activities.. but I walked the length of the lake and met a sweet German girl who I shot the breeze with whilst dangling my feet in the Waikato River

Tonight I night bus to Wellington, being my last stop on the North Island!!