Steam, Geysers and Living Culture
Rotorua sits on a lake inside an old volcanic caldera. Steam rises from parks and gardens, geysers erupt at Te Puia, and the town is the centre of Māori culture for visitors — with cultural evenings, hāngī feasts and living villages.
Rotorua lies on the southern shore of Lake Rotorua, which fills a caldera formed in a huge eruption long ago. The Taupō Volcanic Zone runs beneath the region, and its heat breaks the surface everywhere: in boiling mud pools, hot springs, steaming drains and the geysers of Whakarewarewa.
The smell of sulphur is the first thing visitors notice. Within a day it is forgotten, and the hot pools — used for bathing for centuries — become the best part of a stay.
Te Arawa, the iwi (tribe) of the Rotorua lakes, has welcomed visitors for more than 150 years; guiding at Whakarewarewa began in the nineteenth century. Today Rotorua is the place most visitors come to see Māori culture: a pōwhiri welcome, haka and waiata, carving and weaving, and a hāngī meal cooked in the ground.
At Whakarewarewa families still live in a village warmed and cooked for by the geothermal ground; at Te Puia the national carving and weaving schools train young artists.
Beyond the steam, Rotorua has the Whakarewarewa redwood forest with its mountain-bike trails and treetop walkway, a ring of lakes for swimming and fishing, and rivers that are rafted over waterfalls. The Skyline gondola and luge sit above the town on Mount Ngongotahā.
Rotorua is about three hours’ drive from Auckland and has its own small airport. The Hobbiton Movie Set, Taupō and the Waitomo caves are each about an hour or so away, and Tongariro National Park around two hours.
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