We have a few final things to see on our New Zealand list. This weekend our task was to go to Rotorua, a city south of here, to see live kiwi birds. The kiwis are in captivity, but we heard from our friends we would be able to see them in an open air enclosure, which is the closest we would ever get. Rotorua is also one of the Pacific's most active thermal regions and is surrounded by mud pools, geysers, and hot springs.
Our first stop when we got to Rotorua on Saturday was to visit Rainbow Springs Nature Park which is where the kiwi birds are. A ticket to the park is good for 24 hours, so we spent some time walking around the park looking at trout, native birds and other random farm animals. We went into the nocturnal house and finally saw a live kiwi! It was behind a glass wall, but we couldn't believe our eyes - it was so much bigger than expected. We had been looking for something the size of a softball but this was the size of a rugby ball. We still wanted to see a kiwi up close, so we kept our tickets for the evening show, when other kiwis would be running around their open air enclosure. (Sadly no photos of the kiwis, as it was dark when we saw them and we weren't allowed to use a flash!)
The next stop on our trip was to the gondola and luge in Rotorua. This is very similar to the one that we have visited in Queenstown, but the luge ride is MUCH longer. We had purchased three rides each, but the rain started to fall and we were a bit tired with luging after the first ride so we decided to give our remaining tickets to some strangers.
We hit the road for our hotel, which was 15 minutes outside of town. After checking into our hotel, we grabbed our bathing suits and towels headed off to the Polynesian Spa where we had booked a private hot pool. The hot pool was very nice and we had secluded views of the surrounding bubbling mud pools. It was very hot, so when our allotted 30 minutes was up, we were ready to go.
Next stop was dinner in town. The rain had stopped so we sat outside at a cafe where there was live entertainment. We enjoyed dinner until sun-down when it was time to head back to Rainbow Springs to see more kiwis. The park was lit up with blue, green and red lights which made it feel very exotic. When we entered the kiwi enclosure, we didn't expect to see much, but were lucky enough to see three more kiwis scampering about. They are nocturnal animals so they were out looking for food and other exciting things. They certainly did move fast!
After a long and exciting day we were ready for bed. It was back to the hotel for us as we had to get up early on Sunday for more thermal explorations.
Sunday's adventure was a visit to Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland. At the park, we walked through bubbling and hissing pools, steam vents, craters, and other exciting things. We felt like we were on another planet. At 10:15 we joined the other visitors at Lady Know Geyser as she erupted and hit a height of almost 20 meters in the air.
Mud Pools
Our weekend was a busy one and we are finishing it off by doing more research for our trip to Asia in just a few weeks. We hope that everyone else had a nice weekend!
1 comments:
I'm so glad you saw some (real) kiwis!! Mission accomplished!!!!
It looks like you had a great weekend!
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