Day 7: Tuesday, Feb 26, Rotorua

On Tuesday we were in Rotorua and went to a sheep display, a hot springs, and did some luging.

In NZ sheep outnumber humans about 10:1 (there are about 40M sheep). The result is a tourist-oriented sheep show. It went over the different types of sheep, demonstrated how sheep dogs do their work, and what sheep show would be complete without shearing a sheep?

In Rotorua there is a street luge track. It’s just a wide sidewalk winding down a hill. You sit on a small plastic square with a formed seat in it. Underneath are three wheels like a trike, but the front one is recessed; pulling a handle in front of you forces the retracted wheel out and picking luge off the ground. Gravity takes over once the luge is no longer dragging the ground. I did the same thing in Singapore, but this one had better tracks. It made for a fun diversion. (The best part is always bumping your brother as you pass him up.)

Part of the desolate Hell's Gate landscape.

Next it was off to some hot springs. The hot springs are what put Rotorua on the map. They have several areas of bubbling mud, hot water, and lots of sulfur. Other tourist activities sprouted to try to take advantage of tourist money and the final result is that Rotorua is in every guidebook, though frankly I don’t think it is worth all the hype. The hot spring we went to is called Hell’s Gate, named by George Bernard Shaw when he visited in the early 1900’s. It matches the name. The place reeks of sulphur like nowhere else I have gone. The pools were interesting to see, but they really should issue clothespins for your nose. When we showed up there was a Japanese camera crew following this girl around. We later found out she was a Japanese model going to the spa. Yes, a hot springs mud spa. The ad shows a couple smearing mud on each other (the ads don’t mention the free rotten egg aromatherapy). Under the surroundings, I find this to be about as romantic as doing tax returns together in a pigsty.

In other notes, McDonald’s here sells a “Mac family” – the “Baby Mac” (one layer), the classic Big Mac, and the “Mega Mac” (a Big Mac with four patties instead of two). Also, the cars you see here are different than the cars we saw in Australia. I quickly realized that the van we rented is a typical van here, whereas I don’t remember seeing any of them in Australia. I’m not exactly sure what accounts for this.