Peaks and Places | Travel and Adventure Blog

From Coromandel, we headed south to Rotorua, the geothermal hot spot! Rotorua as a town was founded in the late 1800’s as a tourist destination, and is Māori for ‘Second Lake’.

You could immediately tell that you were in a geothermal area, just from the smell of sulfur (rotting eggs) assaulting your nostrils. The city is actually nicknamed ‘Sulfur City.’ We got to the town in the morning, and there was a lot of fog and steam coming off all of the geothermal lakes. We noticed that it was a very commercialized area, and knowing that we will be back again, we wanted to make this trip as cost efficient as we could. We priced out several options, and with some recommendations from some friendly Kiwi, we made our plan for the day.

Our first stop was in the center of the town, where they had a free park that took you on a boardwalk around a bunch of different geothermal pools. It was pretty cool to see so much activity right in the center of the town. Some of the pools were small, some were greenish in color, and one was rather large, especially considering that right across the street was the public library and main shopping strip.

The next stop on our day trip was Kerosene Creek, a little public creek outside of the town center, with geothermal pools feeding into a running stream. We walked along the stream before deciding on a spot to spend some time in the water. It was Sunday, around midday when we were there, and while there were several groups enjoying the hot springs, we were able to find an unoccupied spot. We guessed the water was around 90-95 degrees, so a bit cooler than we would have liked but still nice to hang out. There were a couple little waterfalls, and overall it was a really pretty and secluded little stream to spend some time in.

Our last geothermal stop of the day was called the Hot N’ Cold Stream. Similar to Kerosene Creek, this local swimming hole is where a cold stream and a hot stream (heated by the geothermal pools) come together. This spot was a little more popular, and there were kids playing in the larger swimming areas, and covering themselves in the mud of the pools (which is supposedly good for your skin…although Eric and I are a bit skeptical). We had already dried off from the first pool, so while we did not decide to swim at this stop, we walked through the water. It was much warmer than Kerosene Creek, and we decided that when we return to Rotorua, we will definitely go swimming here.

At the end of the day we headed to a campsite right on Lake Okareka. It was a campsite by the Department of Conservation (DOC), and with our 365-day DOC campsite pass (which we purchased our first week in New Zealand), we were able to spend the night free of charge.