Rotorua on foot

Rotorua is a city in New Zealand’s North Island famous for its Maori culture and its hot springs and geothermal activity.

Rotorua is a small compact city with its lake, museum, park and several steam vents close together.

Each of the above photos were taken at various locations in the centre of Rotorua and were only a short walk from our hotel.

On our second day we did a 12 mile walk around Rotorua starting from our hotel, along the edge of the park, out towards more steam vents and thermal activity and on to the Redwood Forest at Whakawarewa.

The forest has a number of designated walks indicated by colour eg the red and blue walks for families, the yellow and green walks for intermediate hikers through to the black walk for serious hikers (or trampers as they are known in NZ). The black walk is 34 km, would take around 8 hours and offers spectacular views of Rotorua and surrounding lakes.

Having already walked a couple of miles to get to the forest we then did some of the red and blue walks, most of the yellow walk and back along Fenton Street (the main road through Rotorua) and back to the hotel.

Throughout the walk the weather was very warm (around 26 degrees) but changeable… one minute we were getting soaked in a downpour and the next we were drying off in the sun…