Holiday Towns in the Rain

Chris de Burgh said it best in his song Fatal Hesitation when he sang,

♫ There’s nothing quite like an out of season holiday town,
In the rain, ♫

The weather in Rotorua, North Island, New Zealand was awful for our entire two night stay. The lake looked like it might even overflow! This area is the Geothermal capital of New Zealand. There are countless geysers, boiling mud puddles and hot springs all over the town and throughout the extended area. Some of these are free to visit, some are bathable, others are off limits for safety reasons and many have been commandeered as spa resorts by commercial businesses. If you are into exploding water in any shape for form this is the town for you.

We sucked up the bad weather and donned our rain gear to explore the area. The mud pools in the local geothermal park still plopped and bubbled away.

The signs warned us to stay out of the pools.

But the pools broke the contract by flooding the bridges and walkways!

Despite the weather, this town had a lot going for it. Our hotel room in the Rotvegas Motel had a private Jacuzzi tub. The water was heated geothermally so I didn’t feel guilty using all that hot water. Being “wasteful” of water was really a treat for someone living through the recent Californian Drought.

We also visited the mud baths at Hell’s Gate for an affordable and fun spa experience. I don’t have any photo’s, but I would encourage you to hop over to their site. If you only do one thing in Rotarua it should be this!

This stop was a mud bathing, tub dwelling, movie in hotel room lazy kind of interlude – much needed in the midst of all our travels.

Byddi Lee