You'd have to say that not everything turned out as well as we'd hoped today - not that it has been a bad day but it's had its niggles and disappointments!

We started the day with a complimentary breakfast which was delivered to our room and was excellent. This is the first NZ motel to offer us a free breakfast, so well done to Fenton Court. We then set off for a new geothermal area (to us) called the Waimangu Volcanic Valley, a little later than some mornings but still arrived well before 10am.

Frying Pan Lake at Waimangu Volcanic Valley

The valley offers a walking trail and boat trips on a lake at the end of the track, with a free shuttle bus back to the car so we thought this is what we would do. However at that early hour the boat trips were booked till 1.10, which we felt was too late as we had other plans for later. We knew these boats must have been booked by coach trips as there were hardly any other people around and it seemed to us that if this was happening often then they either needed more boats or more trips!

Anyway we decided just to walk down and get the bus back. Already in a somewhat miffed state we were further irritated by an Israeli ? couple who firstly dogged our steps as we set off on the track and then slowed down when we let them go ahead! It seemed they had 4 devices which had to be used to photograph the sights - camera, camcorder, phone and i-pad! But not every sight as some seemed to be ignored! Eventually we lost them though - I think they caught the bus at some point - no sticking power!

California Quail in our path

Despite all this we really did enjoy our walk and saw yet more amazing geothermal activity. There were more silica terraces, steaming lakes and fumaroles, bubbling springs, a bright turquoise lake, a mini geyser and a river and waterfall flowing with hot water! It was all so unusual that it was hard to get your brain to understand what your eyes where seeing! In the end we decided the boat trip probably wasn't worth the extra cost as we had seen so much on the walk!

Silica terrace

Mini geyser

We returned to Rotorua and had lunch at our motel. Then we went on yet another gondola ride! This one was up a hill just outside Rotorua and gave us a good view of the lake and town but it wasn't a patch on Queenstown! To add to this there were lots of activities to do at the top but nothing that we were interested in! We had considered the luge after watching a similar one in Queenstown but my back is not great today and I didn't want to make it worse! (good excuse?)  Zip wiring, sky swing and 4D cinema just didn't hold much attraction either!

Rotorua from Gondola summit

Instead we settled for a walk beside the lake back in town and an ice cream! We did a bit of souvenir shopping and called it a day!

New Zealand Scaup seek their own space