Fresh New Zealand air

Although trains and trucks have been rolling past our motel room throughout the night I sleep pretty good.

After all our bags were back in the car we drove down to a little cafe we had spotted the day before to get some breakfast.

It was one of these road side cafes, in this case run by a Cambodian woman (or former man, I'm not quite sure) and had great muffins and coffee.

This seems to have also been known byt the truck drivers that stopped by in regular intervals to grab some food and drink and get back onto the road.

To get to Rotorua, today's destination, we took some B roads along the Waikato river and merged back on State Highway 1 later.

We quickly reached the old Maori settlement over the major roads and after checking a couple of motels settled for one in walking distance to the town centre. Because there was plenty to be seen here, we decided to book it for two nights right away and then explore the village.

For some unknown reason Hennessey's Irish Pub had some sort of magically attraction to us that we decided to have lunch here.

The mighty burger was very tasty and the local beer very crafty.

After this big feast it was necessary to take a bit of a walk around the lake front to take a closer look at the smelly mud pools.

Rotorua is, as you may know, a thermally very active area where the pacific and Australian tectonic plates meet. This causes a lot of hot springs, bubbling mud pools and even geysers to be found here. All this is accompanied by the smell of rotten eggs from sulfar. However, the smell was not as strong as I feared, so that walking around the place was quite enjoyable.

Rotorua is a very touristy town and there was quite a bit of activity on the lake, with some water planes taking off, kayak tours available and the public airport across the lake also looked very busy with planes coming in or going out every couple of minutes.

As in most thermal-active towns the minerals and in the water and the mud were used for health purposes and on our way back to the Motel we passed by the two big Spas of the town, the Polynesian Spa and the Blue Baths.

The heat of the day, the walk and maybe the beer at lunch made us all a bit tired and we rested for a while on our motel beds before we set out again.

It was two hours later and dark already when we woke up and gathered our will and strength to go out again.

We weren't really up for experiments and went back to Hennessey's Pub for a few beers.

The burger was big enough to keep me full until now. So were my parents.