Rotorua

We travelled north towards Rotorua today stopping of at the "Thermal Wonderland" enroute.  A little touristy but what a place, it just fascinated Carole and I. The trip started with a geyser - this one reacts to soap, of all things, and so erupts on request so to speak. The tale is that there was a prison nearby and the prisoners wanted to use a hot water spring to wash their clothes. someone lobbed a load of saop into the spring and got a shock as the spring erupted, spewing the clothes skywards.

After the geyser we wandered around the many steaming pools, mineral baths and mud pools - more ploppers - the best we've seen.

The colours are due to arsenic, sulphur, iron, gold and silver traces that are leached out of the rocks by the super heated underground steam.

This was a large pond if boiling mud, the sound of all the plops was fantastic.

Later we got to Liz and John's, Lakeview, Hamurana, on the side of Lake Rotorua. They have a beautiful home and run what has got to be the best Bed and Breakfast in New Zealand, the views were just stunning.

We first met Liz and John when Carole and Liz were competing in endurance riding events and John and I were careering around the countryside crewing for them.

They spoilt us rotten, Carole and Liz went riding - the first time Carole has been on a horse since her back operation - (huge smiles!).

Later we all went for trip around the lakes on their sports boat, stopping at some thermal hot pools - (to ease Caroles muscles?) You can only get to these pools by boat, John's is the red one in the background.

We had a great time with them, true Cumbrian hospitality;

    Top time, top people!