Tag Archives: rotorua

Road Trip Highlights

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Did you enjoy riding along with us on our month long road trip across the north and south islands of New Zealand? We had so much fun exploring and adventuring  and sure hope you have the opportunity to explore it in person some day.

If you are interested in getting a copy of our itinerary, please email us at christine@svSugarShack.com.  The itinerary is broken down by day, with kilometers to each location, links to all activities, bars, restaurants, and hotels.  Here is a recap of our road trip.

Overall journey was well over 5,000km and took us about 28 days.

Here are highlights of each major stop:

North Island

Auckland- The City of Sails: Sky Tower and Viaduct

Loads of fun in Waitomo starting with the beautiful glow worms

And The Lost World Adventure where we abseiled 100m into the earth!

The road trip continues to Wellington, the southern most point in the North island and the capital of NZ.

South Island

We take a ferry across the straight to the South Island.  We visit the Nelson Classic Car Museum and take a Sky Wire ride over the valleys and trees.

The Abel Tasman Forest has several really cool hikes and caves to explore.

Next we make our way down the west side of the south island:  Westport, Charleston, Greymouth and Inchbonnie.

The absolutely beautiful pancake rocks stun us with their unique beauty.

We took a phenomenal helicopter ride over the Franz Josef glacier and dozens of other glaciers.

We get perplexed at Puzzling World and see a huge waterfall in Wanaka.

Definitely one of the highlights for me was our Shotover Jet Boat ride.  A truly thrilling and exhilarating experience!

My favorite day was our trip to Milford Sound where we took a 5.5 hour bus ride, 2 hour boat ride, and 45 minute plane over one of the world’s 8th wonders!

We make it all the way to the southern most point of the south island, Stirling Point at 46 36.53!

Stewart Island

Although we did not technically “drive” to Stewart Island (as you can’t bring your car over), we did take a ferry and enjoyed exploring this “3rd island” of New Zealand.

Our road trip finally turns us around and we have to head back north.  We start by going NE toward Dunedin which has the world’s steepest street (San Francisco has the world’s crookedest street).

We find beautiful, little blue penguins and a steampunk museum in Oamaru!

Christchurch is a city of potential being rebuilt after several natural disasters.

North Island

Tongariro National Park is the home of the world’s best one day hike.  Even though we could not do it, we did manage to hike over 15miles in 2 days.

Lake Tapu has many hot springs, geysers, and mud pools.

One of my favorite waterfalls is Huka Falls where 200,000 liters of water push through the falls every 9 minutes.

Orakei Koroko Geothermal Pools fascinated me with the vibrant colors, geysers, and hot pools.

The road trip continues on to Rotorua where we take a float plane over the lakes, volcano, and hot springs.

We loved the Redwood Tree Walk where we crossed over 28 swing bridges!

And we conclude our road trip with a relaxing day at Polynesia Spa where we soak in acidic and alkaline hot springs.

A truly once in a lifetime experience to be able to explore this amazing country by land.  Even though I felt like we saw a lot, we did not touch on so many other wonderful things.   I think a return visit will be in our future.

Events from this blog occurred in mid-February to mid-March 2023.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual live events.

Polynesia Spa & Hot Springs in Rotorua

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Rotorua is famous for all of its geothermal hot springs and the best place to go is Polynesia Spa.  They have 14 pools and 13 private pools that can be rented for 30-minute increments.  The 14 main pools are a combination of alkaline and acidic pools which have very different healing proponents.

We had 45 minutes before our private lake view pool time so we hopped in to the Rachel pool which is alkaline at 41C and is the hottest pool on the grounds.  They had a lovely waterfall just behind Matt in the upper photo.

We then move over to the Priest Spring which is acidic and meant to be really good for joint and muscle pain.

This alkaline pool was about 40C and had a huge rock arch that provided shade and privacy.

I know it looks like there was nobody in the pools with us, but I just got lucky and creative with my shots.  There were dozens of people with us at each pool.

Private Alkaline Pool

It is finally time to go to our private deluxe lake view pool.  I had no idea what to expect.  When we got there I was a bit surprised and disappointed.  It was really just a small room with a small pool that had 3 thin walls.  But, it was our private small room.

We took advantage of our time and enjoyed every minute of our 35 minutes before heading back to the public area.

Spending a few hours at Polynesia Spa was a great way to end the day and our month long journey on the road.  The hot springs were healing for our bodies and our souls.

Events from this blog post occurred in mid-March.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind live events.  In our last blog post we tramp 20 meters off the ground across 28 bridges in the Redwood Forest.

Redwood Tree Walk & Swing Brudges

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Rotorua is the home of the famous Redwood Tree Walk across 28 swing bridges and 27 platforms.  You are over 20 meters above the ground as you walk 700 meters across the sky.  It is thrilling.

The swing bridge walking trail is shown in the first top left photo.  Matt is showing you how wide these majestic redwood trees can grow.  The widest tree in Rotorua is 72m tall and 12.6m wide.  

It is easy to feel insignificant amongst these giant trees. 

A local artist was hired to bring light art features to illuminate the redwoods at night.  David Trubridge created over a dozen pieces throughout the forest.

This is the tallest platform on the redwood tree walk which requires you to climb up a long flight of swing stairs.

The biggest rule is to NOT touch the trees.  It requires great restraint to not touch these beautiful trees, but the boys push the limits (they didn’t actually touch the tree).

New Zealand is doing a lot to save the forests and regrow their trees.  But in the lower photo you can see what deforestation has done to this country.

A spectacular adventure and so very beautiful.  There are dozens of walks in and around the redwood forest as well.  We opted to do the short 30minute walk as we had to head off to the Polynesia Spa.

Events from this blog occurred in mid-March.  Our blog posts run 10-12 weeks behind actual events.  We take a float plane over Rotorua in our last blog post – did you miss it?