Day 14: Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland & Whakarewarewa Redwood Forest

Day 14

Summary: Drove to Wai-O-Tapu, visited Thermal Wonderland, had our worst meal of the trip, drove to Rotorua, walked in Whakarewarewa Redwood forest

Wednesday, January 15th

We left Taupo in the morning and drove 40 minutes to the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. It’s a geothermal area where they built walking paths around several different elements all in one place. It was wild! And stinky!

The location features the Lady Knox Geyser, which erupts every day at 10:15am. We didn’t realize that and arrived too late to see it. It wasn’t a big deal though, there were plenty of other boiling and steaming things to see there.

Pictured in the next three photos is the Champagne Pool.

This pool was such a neon acid green! It gets its color from sulfur and other minerals and was one of our favorites. It looks radioactive!

This lake was a bright emerald green from the algae in the warm water.

We decided to eat at the onsite cafe for lunch. I chose an egg salad sandwich because I thought it was fitting with the eggy sulfur smell that surrounds the area. It was bland, which I expected coming from the grab and go cooler. Greg said his panini was decent. The strangest thing was the milkshakes we ordered. It took a little bit of time, but I didn’t expect it to be speedy because they were making coffees and all sorts of things in the kitchen. When we got them, I took a sip of the chocolate one and it was just straight liquid chocolate milk, not thick like a milkshake. I thought maybe the straw was just in a melted pocket, but after I stirred it around I could tell the whole thing was liquid. How strange! Greg’s strawberry milkshake was comprised completely of frothy bubbles. The only thing we could figure is maybe they added too much milk and/or mixed it for way too long. Either that, or they just poured milk in the cup and gave it a shake. Needless to say, it was our worst meal on our trip, but it was totally edible so I can’t complain. We loved the food we had everywhere else so that’s pretty good!

Our next stop was the mud pool down the road. It was hilarious and entrancing. We stared at the bubbling mud for quite some time. It was like a thick boiling stew, and whenever a big bubble burst it would spew mud in the air in a satisfying way. We were mesmerized.

We left Wai-O-Tapu and drove 30 minutes to our Airbnb in Rotorua. It was a tiny/container house in a family’s backyard. We laid down to rest and both quickly fell asleep. I must have fallen asleep first because Greg took a selfie.

When we woke up, there was a puppy outside the door waiting to play with us! The host told us her name is Lulabelle and she was the sweetest black lab. She wanted us to play with her and her stick, but would not let go of it to play fetch!

We drove down the road and went for a nice walk among the redwood trees in Whakarewarewa forest. Visiting the redwoods in California is on my bucket list, and we learned that the redwoods in New Zealand are actually not native – they are the same as the ones in California. The redwoods were planted in New Zealand because of its reputation as timber for general building purposes. The trees like the deep, fertile, well-drained soil in this area, and apparently they grow faster in New Zealand than in California due to the soil and even rainfall.

There are lots of walking and biking paths in the forest and it was a very pleasant walk in the late afternoon.

After the walk, we found a bunch of places to eat dinner at an outdoor area in Rotorua. We originally put our name in at a place called Atticus Finch, but checked out the menus at the other restaurants while we waited. We decided to eat at Wholly Smoked instead. Greg had pan fried fish that came with lobster bisque and pumpkin ravioli. I had the vegan jackfruit tacos.

By the time we finished eating, our reservation at Atticus Finch was ready so we went there for dessert! We each had a pavlova, which was described as peanut butter mousse, salted caramel, vanilla ice cream, and popcorn praline.

It was like eating peanut butter caramel popcorn with the dissolving properties of cotton candy. It is a meringue and airy like nothing I’ve ever tried before. The waitress was telling us how there is a debate between Australia and New Zealand as to who invented pavlova, but I was so confused because it has a Russian name! I did some research and apparently the dish is inspired by Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova, who toured Australia and New Zealand in 1926.

We headed back to the Airbnb to prepare for more adventures the following day!

Thanks for reading!

-Rebecca

Continue on to day 15!