The GCW Tour, Sydney & New Zealand: Rotorua

So here's the story of Rotorua, roughly as it was described in the little cornball movie that played at the Rotorua Museum (and, if my actor recognizing abilities are any good, starrig the guy who played Boba Fett's father in the Star Wars prequels)...

The earliest natives arriving in Rotorua were basically running from the natives on Hawaii, having done something there to piss them off. When they landed in Rotorua, they found a volcanically active area with lots of other resources as well. So basically, a pretty nice spot.

Sometime in the early 1800s, the whites found the land as well. They, too, thought it was interesting and had useful resources. So deals began to be made between the Maori natives and the new whites, which resulted in a burgeoning tourist industry focused on the "pink and white terraces," and spas and mudbaths. 

Unfortunately, whether the result of angry gods and/or shifting tectonic plates, the local volcano eventually blew. This event managed to kill most everyone who was living in Rotorua at the time, and also eradicated some of the features that had brought the tourists in the first place.

But of course the few remaining people began rebuilding. This time they built bigger. And with the end of World War I and the subsequent flu epidemic there was a significant market for the healing spas. So again came the tourists.

Today, the spas -- or at least new versions -- are still there, but they aren't really the tourist draw they once were. Now it's jet boats, zip lines, downhill luge runs, skydiving, bungee jumping. and the like. But much of the place still smells like rotten eggs, there are fence off lakes filled with boiling water, and what was once the great spa is now the local museum. 

It's a nice museum, though there are only a few places you can take pictures. 

Boiling -- and stinking -- waters in the local park 

The Rotorua Musuem -- formerly the primary spa

The basement mud baths in the old spa