Dave did that running thing this morning, I just slept!

We found out we actually had breakfast included at the hotel when we checked in so we took full advantage and filled up for the day. This is where we met George a seven year old from Auckland.

The weather wasn’t looking great and rain was forecast so we packed the rucksack accordingly and set out for the Skyline. We bought a combo ticket for a gondola ride, 3 goes of the luge and a trip on a zipline. OMG it was soo much fun, we so loved our first zipline experience. Whilst there we checked out the trip George had told us about and booked our places.

We headed back to the hotel via Kuirau Park, where you can see geothermal hot springs and pools, it’s unreal how much steam is coming off them.

A quick change at the hotel and we set off to meet our boat for the afternoon’s trip out to a hot pool experience on the edge of Lake Rotoiti. We met up with George and the Ford family again as we boarded the boat. This was amazing, the boat based on an Airstream caravan trailer, had been custom built over 3 winters by Berndt our skipper, originally from Germany – the pools were only accessible by boat and there were only around 20 people there sharing 7 pools of varying temperatures. We were able to get in the lake itself as well as being able to do a little walk up to a viewpoint of the lake. We met some amazing people including Nikki and Nigel and we were so thankful that George came and introduced himself to us at breakfast! The whole experience lasted 2.5 hours and was so relaxing and chilled.

Back on land we drove back to the hotel to shower and change, we headed out to Eat Street for dinner and ended up in the ‘Wholly Smoked’ where we shared a fabulous meat platter along with a pint or two.

Next it was off to find a taxi to take us to Te Puai, another geothermic wonderland where we were to see the geysers by night. Tbh this was a little disappointing, the Maori tour guide was extremely informative but we detoured to see the geyser as it was in action and then we never moved on to see anything else. We did get a nice free hot chocolate though. No taxis to be seen afterwards so a 30 min walk back to the hotel.

Mileage from leaving Pauanui to tonight in Rotorua 318km (198 miles)