Road trip to & Rotorua

Yesterday was roadtrip day. Wellington to Rotorua. Many years ago I drove the route quite often, but it was just me and the requirement to stop and sight-see wasn't there.
Yesterday we took our time but also had a more interesting journey.

On the journey I discovered a few things I'd forgotten about New Zealand.
If you want to have a successful (or get lots of marketing for your restaurant in a regional town, you need to have a plane associated with it). Here are two examples (and yes believe me there were more).

Mangaweka International Airport ( & cafe ) .... yeah right.

McDonalds at Taupo. 

Likewise on the journey each town needs to differentiate itself by associating itself with an icon, and that icon needs to be large.
Two examples;

• Taihape. Gumboot capital of the world. Yep, a giant gumboot.

• Taupo (again). Big lake. Lots of rainbow trout. Yep, a trout.

Having said that it must work. We stopped at both Taihape (for lunch) and Taupo for a break.
BTW, Taihape has a conveniently located auto electrician. This works out nicely when you've overloaded the car with electronics and need to buy a fuse. You can also get mobile reception which you need in order to use Google Translate to translate the Japanese car manual to workout where the fuse box is, and which fuse will be blown.

All-in-all, an interesting an enjoyable drive up. We also saw a few tanks training just off the Desert Road (from the army base in Waioru). Sorry, no photos of that one.

Today was spent exploring Rotorua. We kicked off the morning with a trip to Hells Gate. Once the kids got over the aromatics of sulphur they enjoyed checking out the thermal park. Lots of steam, thermal pools, mud pools etc.

The medicine pool is supposed to be good for the skin. I couldn't resist.

I can now start my new career as a hand model.

This afternoon we headed over to Rainbow Springs Kiwi Wildlife Park. They are doing some really great work trying to save and protect the native kiwi population.
We got to see how they save kiwi eggs and then raise the kiwi's until they are big enough to be re-released back to the same location they came from. They have just hatched their 1000th kiwi.
We also got to see three kiwi's that were raised in captivity. It was a really great experience and one that the kids really enjoyed. I didn't take any photos as it was restricted.
They did have some great exhibits outside of the nocturnal viewing environment though.

Also in the wildlife park they had a host of native birds, fish and the really cool dinosaur. The Tuatara. 

To finish the day off and relax we hit up the Polynesian Spa. 

The kids got to splash around and ride the mini slide, whilst Sam and I watched the from the 40degC hot mineral pools.