Onto the next part of our New Zealand tour, through the geothermal area in the middle of the North Island.
There’s a few geothermal parks around Taupō and Rotorua. We had chosen to visit Orakei Korako, based on our research it’s one of the more underrated ones.
The forecast called for rain to start there around 2pm. It’s a 2.5 hour drive from Havelock North, so after breakfast we drove pretty much straight there. We did stop to fill up on gas just outside Napier, good thing we did cause there wasn’t another gas station until we reached Taupō.
Also just outside Napier we passed through Esk Valley. We’ve had wine from there a few times this trip. The last vineyard we passed had along Hwy 5 had a sign, “last vineyard tasting in Hawke’s Bay”, lol. We’ll be back in another wine region when we get to Waiheke Island.
Arrived at Orakei Korako Geothermal Park & Cave around 1pm, the lot was about half full, which boded well.
Bought our tickets online, they had QR codes plastered everywhere with the link to their website, instead of having to staff a ticket booth.
It’s a two-minute boat ride across the Waikato River (included in the ticket). The boat goes back and forth on demand so it’s never a long wait (I guess unless there’s crowds backlogged).
The path through the geothermal park starts immediately on the other bank. It was pretty cool to see, different from anything else we’ve seen on this trip (as frequent readers may know, we like to have a variety on our trips otherwise it gets monotonous for us).
The walkway takes about an hour to complete, passing by geysers, mud pools and hot springs. There’s no railing on the side of the walkway, so we had to be careful when taking pics, that we didn’t take a step back into the boiling water.
Anyways it was really well done. It seemed like we were the only tourists in most parts; partially that’s cause it’s well designed. For whatever reason, it is under-touristed. We really liked it.
We had lunch at the on-site cafe. It started raining just as we were leaving, so we timed this really well!
It was an hour drive to our next place, Tongariro Lodge near Tūrangi. The town and surrounding area is one of the top places in the world for trout fishing. We were staying here cause it’s also a convenient jump-off for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing Walk.
The 19.4 km / 8 hour trail is considered one of the top day walks in NZ. It’s mentioned in all the guidebooks as a must-do. We booked the accommodation to have the option; but as we did more research we decided not to. For one thing, it’s now very popular - over 3,000 people walk it every day. This causes bottlenecks at the start and finish - you need to arrange for bus transfers. It’s sort of like the pics you see at the top of Everest, although I might be exaggerating. But the point is that we enjoy the isolation of walks in nature. Walking with 3,000 other folk just doesn’t have the same attraction for us.
Another reason for staying here is the excellent restaurant. We had the daily special, seared duck breast, which was excellent.
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