Rotorua Roadtrippin’ #NewZealand

New Zealand has such a beautiful countryside that exploring it by car was definitely the way to go. After arriving in Auckland airport we hopped into the car and drove down towards Tauranga to stay with our friend Tracey and her son Riki for the first days. On the way down south we drove through lush and beautiful valleys. We made a quick stop at the Karangahake Gorge to take in the view and dip our feet into the water. We even encountered an Alpaca farm on our way.

On our first daytrip we drove down to a town called Rotorua that sits by the Rotorua lake. The town is famous for its geothermal features such as spouting geysers but also the rich Maori culture. We visited the Whakarewarewa Living Maori and Thermal Village where we saw how a small community of Maori people lived around the geysers and also included the heat of the geysers into their daily lives. Vegetables can be boiled in the cooking hot spring water and even the heat that comes out of the ground is used for steaming food.

The mineral rich hot spring water pools are used for daily baths. (And i dipped my foot in, it was steaming hot!) Visitors get a guided tour (which is very recommended) with lots of interesting insight into the maori culture and how they lived in the past up to today. What surprised me was how well in general the Maori culture and tradition is integrated into the everyday life. A lot of street and town names are in maori and many things are translated into the original maori language.

We finished the day back in Tauranga at the bay at Mount Maunganui for sunset and some relaxing downtime by the water. We took some of these silhouette shots of the 20 weeks old twinnies bump.