Rotorua - North Island, New Zealand

Rotorua is an amazing tourist paradise in the central North Island. It is famous for its volcanic scenery, boiling mud pools, spouting geysers, adventure activities and beautiful Maori culture experienced here in the form of traditional dances, haka and traditionally cooked hangi food.

Rotorua's volcanic scenery contrasts sharply with the pine trees in of one of the world's largest plantation forests, the Kaingaroa Forest. Since the 1930s, silviculture or the cultivation of forest trees has been a major revenue earner through paper and pulp mills.

Rotorua is any traveller's dream with one of the world's most concentrated geo thermal areas easily viewable in the form of twenty metre geysers spouting alongside colourful mineral pools and steaming mud pools. An easy little dig will unearth a hot springs almost anywhere here.

Most hotels have geothermally fed hot tubs. The hot springs are a combination of sulphur and heat making the landscape barren except for really hardy trees that can withstand and grow in this hot temperature. Most pools are lined with lustrous rainbow colour mineral deposits giving out bright hues of orange, green and red.

Rotorua Town

Rotorua is one of the few cities in New Zealand that has been promoted as a tourist destination since the early twentieth century. The Government Gardens east of the town centre is testimony to this old tourist preeminence with its steaming sulphurous vents, rose gardens, palms and the 1908 built Tudor bathhouse.

Rotorua Town - More Information

Rotorua and Surrounds

Much of the best of Rotorua is located outside the city about half an hour's drive to the south on the way to Taupo. There are numerous tours run by operators which can pack a lot of activity in a single day.

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Rotorua Accommodation

Rotorua Activities