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Day two was where the trip properly began. After picking up the rental car in Auckland, the city fell away quickly — within minutes, the roadside opened into green pasture, sheep grazing in unhurried clusters, the kind of scenery that makes New Zealand’s North Island look exactly like the photographs. The drive to Rotorua took about three hours, and the window was interesting enough that it didn’t feel like a transfer. As we got closer to the city, the sulfur smell arrived — that distinctive, slightly sharp scent that Rotorua is famous for. Somehow it made the place feel more real.
Skyline Rotorua: Up the Gondola
We were staying at the Regent of Rotorua — a comfortable hotel in the center of the city. After checking in, the first stop was Skyline Rotorua, a gondola complex on the hill above the city.
The gondola ride takes only a few minutes, but the view that unfolds on the way up is worth the ticket alone. By the time you reach the top, Lake Rotorua, the surrounding forests, the city streets, and the rolling hills beyond are all laid out in front of you. The air was noticeably cooler up there. It’s one of those viewpoints that gives you the whole picture of a place before you’ve properly explored it — which is exactly the right order.
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Hell’s Gate: Mud Baths, 30 Minutes from the City
After Skyline, we drove about 30 minutes out of the city center to Hell’s Gate — a geothermal park whose name is considerably more intimidating than the experience. The main attraction here is the mud bath: natural thermal mud, rich in minerals, applied directly to the skin. The claimed benefits are dermatological; the actual experience is warm, slightly strange, and oddly satisfying. I came away feeling like it had probably done something useful. Whether or not that’s true, it’s the kind of activity that earns its place on a Rotorua itinerary.
Evening: A Māori Cultural Show
Rotorua is one of the best places in New Zealand to experience Māori culture, and an evening show was the obvious way to spend the rest of the day. The venue was lit by firelight when we arrived, the drums already going, and the atmosphere was genuinely charged before anything had started.
The haka — the Māori war dance — is one of those performances that television and YouTube simply cannot prepare you for. It’s not a performance in the conventional sense. The physical commitment of the performers, the sound, the eye contact — it communicates something that’s hard to articulate but immediately felt. You understand, in a way you don’t from a screen, that this was designed to be seen by an enemy before a battle.
The evening package included dinner: a traditional hāngī, cooked underground using heated stones. The method is ancient and the result is slow-cooked, flavored by steam and earth — not dramatic food, but genuinely good. A fitting end to a day spent largely outdoors.
Back to the Hotel
A three-hour drive, a gondola, a mud bath, a haka, and a traditional dinner — day two covered more ground than most full trips. The tiredness at the end of it was the good kind. Day 3 goes deeper into Rotorua’s natural landscape. More to come.
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