Rotorua and Kuirau Park

Some of the median of Fenton Street in Rotorua was planted with tulips.  There were areas with lots of different colors. 

Our plan was to visit Te Puia, home to the biggest, naturally active geyser in the Southern Hemisphere, in the morning then do a guided tour of the Māori village of Ohinemutu.  They only do guided tours.  When we got to Te Puia, the only tour left was one that coincided with our already scheduled Ohinemuta tour.  So, instead of visiting Te Puia, we went to the city's thermal park, Kuirau.

Kuirau doesn't have any geysers, but it has plenty of hot pools and mud pots. 

I found what I thought was a sweetgum seed pod on the ground so I took a photo of the tree. There are 15 species of sweetgum trees and I will leave it up to a botanist to tell you the variety of this tree. 

Sweetgum trees are known for their balls, also called gumballs, sweetgum fruits, or capsules. The spiky gumballs hang in clusters. The hard, brown, woody sweetgum balls measure between 1” and 3” (2.5 – 7.5 cm) and contain numerous seeds.  In this photo, the top gumball was picked up in Oregon while the bottom one is from New Zealand.  They definitely look different.  It's possible the Oregon one is off a sycamore tree instead of a sweetgum tree.  I'll leave that identification to a botanist. 

This hot pool looks a little muddy. 

We did see areas that had temporary fencing around them.  They were new thermal areas. 

If you have been reading my previous posts during the New Zealand part of this trip, you could identify this as a Pukeko.  Yes that bird is walking in almost boiling water.  I guess I had read that it is adaptable but that's pushing the limit. 

This little bird posed for a photo but I don't know what it is.

Pretty flower-covered bridge.  Might be honeysuckle. 

This sculpture is called Anchor Peace. Anchor stone - holding people to a place of peace.  The cross on this anchor symbolises the role the of the Red Cross in protecting human life and health, preventing and alleviating human suffering in war zones.  The birds sure found it to be a convenient place to perch.

Sign in the sidewalk. 

Time to go through the bridge. 

City police vehicle parked alongside the park. 

They had nice, hot foot baths but the seats were wet, and we hadn't brought our towels.  It was cool out and we were wearing coats so sticking our feet in would have probably felt nice. 

scented garden

Mud pot. 

In early Maori times the small lake in the park was much cooler and was known as Taokahu. Legend tells us that a beautiful young woman named Kuiarau was bathing in the waters when a taniwha (legendary creature) dragged her to his lair below the lake. The gods above were angered and made the lake boil so the Taniwha would be destroyed forever. From that time on, the bubbling lake and the steaming land around it have been known by the name of the lost woman, although the spelling has changed a little.

All I found about this sculpture is that it was put up in 1966. 

Look at that beautiful rhododendron

Kuirau Lake is the largest body of water in the park and it was producing so much steam that we couldn't even get a photo of it.  This boiling stream ran out of it. 

Check out the following video to see how fast the stream was moving. 

This layer of foam had built up where the stream ran into a place with standing water.  

There was a playground in the park, and they had a couple different types of equipment that I had never seen before. 

Wished I knew what this plant was called.

Right next to it was a bush with white flowers of the same type. 

That evening we heard about a street called Eat Street.  It was an alleyway full of eating establishments. 

My sister decided to try their beer sampler.  She thought they might be small, 5 oz glasses of each of the bees she selected.  You can see they were much bigger.  I think she drank three of them. 

I had chicken pasta with some wonderful maple-glazed carrots.