Thursday, February 21, 2013

Day 322: Bay of Islands to Rotorua

This was another day of travel as I took the bus from Paihia, back down to Auckland and south through Hamilton to Rotorua. Rotorua is another rather touristy town (like apparently almost all towns in New Zealand). The main attraction in the area is all the thermal pools and hot springs, but it also has built something of an adventure tourism market with things like skydives, rock climbing and jumping in big clear plastic balls half full of water and rolling around obstacle courses.

The hostel I was in was really cool. It shared a building with a basement cinema and a rock climbing gym with big windows connecting the hostel lounge with the gym so you could look in as everybody was doing the climbing. The town itself was pretty quiet, but it was large enough to have quite a few shops, and it sits next to Lake Rotorua, so there were more nice water views.

By the time my bus got in it was too late to do much beyond explore town a bit and get dinner, but I was already making plans for what to do with my time there.

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