….has a deep connection to the indigenous roots of Aotearoa, one of the best places to experience authentic Māori traditions. It is packed with adventure activities such as white water rafting, zip lining, kayaking, zorbing etc. Rotorua is famous for being a geothermal area which as you drive in you get the whiff off. There is a strong sulphurous smell, boiling mud pools, hot pools and geezers.

I choose to go white water rafting in the morning then later in the afternoon we are booked to the NZ Arts & Crafts Institute for a Hangi meal, this is where the food is cooked underground, it was a carvery and whilst the food was very nice, too much of it, typical carvery, I don’t feel like I experienced anything overly special or traditional.

White Water Rafting at Tutea Falls:

This is the world’s highest commercially rafted waterfall, hosted by Rotorua Rafting – have I lost my mind? The Falls are located 20 mins from Rotorua on the Kaituna River (grade 5 river/rapids). We come down 3 big waterfalls starting of on a relatively small one and worked up to the big one, 6 of us in the raft, the guide, Fio, Jeff, myself and two Scottish girls. This is a high-adrenaline experience and I am utterly relieved we didn’t flip! I chose both the guide and Jeff on statistics as Jeff was flipped on his last experience and the guide had been flipped on his previous time out so statistically Jeff had a 50:50 chance the last time and the guides are a 10% chance, so my reckoning was Jeff was down to around 25% chance and the guide had a 90% chance of not flipping on this one and thankfully it worked lol ;-). I will let the pics speak for themselves. The guide gave us the choice to get out of the raft and swim/float/get ducked down a rapid, well in for a penny and all that – I came down the rapid without much bother bar the higher heart rate, however, the current must have changed direction or caught me differently as I came down last, out of all the rafts I took off right, down the next rapid, before I did I caught the safety rope but the current was so strong I couldn’t hold it with one hand and couldn’t get the other to it…….argh so off I sped down the next one, thankfully there is a safety kayak and after a considerable ducking he gets me to wrap my feet round the front of the Kayak and hold onto it still choking and spluttering! He deposits me on the bank and I wait there for my pals to pick me up, which gives me time to recover and get my heart rate down again. This highlights two things ie if you were on your own in a fast flowing river you can see how people get into trouble or indeed drown very quickly and how safety focused our guides were as the chap in the kayak was there in a blink for me. Overall, I loved this experience and would do it again.

The New Zealand Arts & Crafts Institute

We head off for our hangi meal and cultural tour, the Institute has facilities for students to come and study their crafts for up to 3 years eg making Taonga – sacred/personal possessions often out of Ponamu – New Zealand Green Stone (take your mind back to the green stone The All Blacks take with them), weaving many things eg bags, purses, lobster pots etc these students will leave the institute fully skilled in many of these area’s

In this area we see boiling (plumping) mud and geezers, nature really is a force! We make our way back to the accommodation where some of us head off to the local Spa, the hot pools ranged from 38-41 degrees, soooo nice and soooo relaxing and my skin felt fabulous afterwards. Fio and I do our laundry in the evening and have an early night as we have a 20 km hike tomorrow at the Tangariro Alpine Crossing.