Rotorua
We roll into Rotorua about 6 pm and check into our hotel The “Lake Plaza” Rotorua Hotel. We get in, rest a bit and decide to grab some dinner around 8 pm. It’s rainy and rather than navigate the roads in the car or walk we decide to eat at the hotel restaurant “The Lakes”. The brochure we see looks good and the food descriptions are appetizing. When we arrive we are only one of two tables in the place. Our waitress who also is the hostess is very nice and gets us started with a drink. We make our dinner selections and choose a wine for our dinner. That’s about as pleasant a beginning as one could ask for I think. The restaurant begins to fill up and we realize our waitress is the only one working the whole thing. She is soon overwhelmed when she brings our appetizer of seafood chowder her apron is “ringing” because she has a cordless phone from the reception desk in it. A couple sits next to us and they are possibly Spanish or Portuguese. If the woman in the couple would have looked any closer at my soup I would have felt compelled to giver her a bite. Luckily she sat down. Our entrees arrived but not before the male guest next to our table began blowing his nose frequently enough to tell time to. Maybe we became a little spoiled with our precious dining experiences. Hopefully this is just a fluke. The food was not good. Another funny moment was when I asked for a steak knife to cut my steak, which was definitely necessary, and I was told there was only one steak knife in the whole of the restaurant but it could not be found…. Sorry. I thought she was kidding… she was not. I soon tired of my trying meal as well did Lisa. We tried to quietly finish our wine but the impatience of our neighbor table and his constant talking on his cell phone, which seems to require one to always speak slightly louder, was too much to bear. We got our bill, signed it to the room and upstairs we went. It wasn’t’ so bad really but all of our other meals have been so good it was a real dining dip in the road. 1/10 Friday Today we are heading to “Wai-o-tapo” thermal wonderland. NZ has an area, which is thermally active! Near our hotel there is the constant smell of sulfur. Not a very pleasant smell to have around all the time. The thermal wonderland was very cool. One of the highlights was the Lady Knox geyser that shoots steam as high as 60 feet in the air. We were just late in seeing its 10:15 am eruption but it was still shooting some 30 or so feet in the air and the show was well worth trekking to. One of the nice things about being a little late was the crowd had cleared and we had the geyser nearly to ourselves. From there we checked out the park and saw some amazing geothermal activity. Upwellings of boiling hot water, mud and steam. It’s interesting to be walking across a bridge and to look down and see the ground around you percolating. A little unnerving too! It was an A+++ experience and definitely a lot of fun. We cruise back to Rotorua to grab some lunch. Of course it rains but it seems to do this anytime we get near our car. We’re beginning to like our car more everyday. It’s made by “Holden” and is small but comfortable. Holden cars are the best selling cars in NZ. Second is Toyota and third is Ford. Although the Fords we’ve seen look nothing like the cars at home. All are smaller and there are no SUVs to speak of. We have lunch in Rotorua at the “Pig & Whistle”. It’s a converted police station that has been turned into a pub. It was filled with very nice people and we had some local micro brewed beer and a couple of chicken burgers. A welcomed dining experience, which is moving us back on the right track with food again. The meal has left our tummies full and we head back to the hotel a few minutes away where we take a long relaxing nap. Very long, very relaxing. Once we wake we eventually take a walk into downtown Rotorua and have dinner at “Zambique”, a kind of Asian flair. We drink Lindhier Sparkling Wine. I have the rump of lamb and Lisa has ostrich. Presentation is excellent; the service is its usual friendly NZ style. Neither one of us is too hungry but the food is excellent. Back to the hotel and set the alarm for 6:30 am. We head for the East coast in the central part of the north island and the city of Napier.