Amy and David Travel 2012: Rotorua

We left a grey start to the day in Taupo and headed off to Rotorua in search of some rays. It failed.

Rotorua is either the Maori for 'smells like rotten eggs' or 'place of extreme crap weather'. Either way we arrived and headed straight out of town again to the Blue and Green Lakes.

Either the weather was hiding the colours or these lakes have been misnamed!

Green - apparently

Blue Lake. Or is it Green Lake? It's a lake!

Maori tree carving

The sun poked through so we headed for Rainbow Springs - a kiwi reserve and theme park. They take wild kiwi eggs in from around 100km radius of Rotorua and keep the kiwis until they hit about 6 months old. This is because the parents disappear as soon as the chick starts to hatch, leaving the chick exposed to predators. By 6 months old they are fairly big, quick and savvy (ish) and they are released back to the area they were harvested from.

Do what it says

We were taken on a special backstage tour of the park where we saw the eggs, the hatchery and some of the recently hatched chicks. We also saw the Intensive Care area where injured kiwis are brought to receive medical attention. No photos were allowed in these areas but here is a kiwi from the reserve.

Beaky

The park has a few other animals too. Here's a few.

Green Gecko

It was feeding time for the gecko - I missed the 'impact' shot but apparently flies are lip-smacking good!

Yum!

An interesting duck (as ducks go)

We left the kiwis behind and headed into Rotorua. It really does smell, but it has a nice museum building (no idea what's in it as it was closed!)

If only you could smell this

The next day it rain was back and the cloud was so low we couldn't see as far as the end of the campsite. So we pulled on our wet weather gear and headed for the Redwood Forest Park, home to a load of 100+ year old redwood trees.