Rotorua

By Murray Dewhurst in Rotorua, New Zealand

Rotorua. You know you’ve arrived when that delightfully sulphuric rotten egg aroma has a firm hold on your olfactory senses.

Also known as Rotovegas or just Vegas to the locals, but it couldn’t be any different to Las Vegas, sure it’s streets are lined with neon encrusted hotels and tourist attractions, but visitors don’t come here to gamble. Back when Las Vegas was a neon twinkle in Nevada’s eye Victorian tourists travelled from far and wide to visit Rotorua, it’s Maori culture and thermal activity.

They came to bathe in health giving hot mineral pools, submerge themselves in mud baths, try not to submerge themselves in scalding bubbling mud pools and geysers and to visit the Pink and White Terraces, once touted as the 8th wonder of the world, but sadly now buried under 50 metres of water and volcanic ash thanks to the 1886 Tarawera Eruption. 

Today though there are so many modern attractions to add to your itinerary it’s hard to know where to start (and what you can afford), from Shweebing, Mountain Biking, Zorbing, Luging, bungy jumping to jet boating, trout fishing and white water rafting and kayaking.

Whale bone and pounamu artifacts, left. Ancestral carvings guard the park entrance, right

We visited to ride some of the fast flowing mountain bike trails behind the town with the kids. Once we’d worn ourselves out on the trials and washed off in the pools it was time for a bit of culture at the old the old Bath House, now the Rotorua Museum. Set in a sort of steaming Victorian time warp, the old tudor style building is surrounded by formal gardens, thermal vents, various monuments and croquet and bowling greens.

The old Bath House building

The grounds were originally gifted to the crown by the local Te Arawa, and their ancestral carvings stand guard at the gates. The museum itself is fascinating, dedicated partly to old bath house history, it’s various (sometimes bizarre) treatments and to local Maori history and taonga; their arrival from Hawaiki, pre and post European settlement, development as NZ’s first tourism destination, the Tarawera Eruption.