Day four of the North Island road trip. The plan: leave Rotorua, stop at a wildlife park for a closer look at some animals than is strictly comfortable, then drive to Tauranga on the coast for an afternoon hike. It was a lower-key day than the volcanic dramatics of Rotorua, and the right kind of change of pace.
Morning: Leaving Rotorua
Rotorua in the morning is a slow, easy place to be in. Hot springs, geothermal landscapes, good food — it holds up well on a second day. Leaving was slightly reluctant. Paradise Valley Springs is about ten minutes from the city center by car, which made the transition easy.
Paradise Valley Springs: Closer Than Expected
Paradise Valley isn’t a large facility, but it does one thing better than most wildlife parks: proximity. Deer, llamas, and Highland cattle move around the grounds freely, and feeding or patting them is simply part of the visit. It has the feel of an unusually well-maintained farm rather than a zoo, which makes the whole experience more relaxed.
The lions, though, are the main event. The adults were doing what adult lions in captivity tend to do — moving minimally, looking thoroughly unbothered by everything. The cubs, however, were available to touch. I use “cubs” loosely: these were young lions with paws the size of small plates, and the thought of what a bite from one of them might do was not entirely absent from my mind as I reached out. The keeper’s instructions were precise, the animals are well-trained, and nothing went wrong. It was genuinely memorable, if slightly nerve-wracking. My sister, for the record, touched one when the keeper wasn’t looking. She survived.
Tauranga: Hiking Mount Maunganui
After the animals, the drive to Tauranga took around an hour. The city sits on the coast at the base of a distinctive volcanic cone — Mount Maunganui — and the combination of sea air and good weather made it an obvious hiking day.
The trail to the summit is well-maintained and not particularly demanding, which meant the views arrived gradually and without too much suffering. Near the top, the landscape opened up: blue water, white sand, the city spread out below, the harbor in the distance. It’s the kind of view that prompts an honest assessment of whether you could live here. The answer, standing up there in the wind, was probably yes.
I stayed at the top longer than strictly necessary. The light was good and there was nothing pressing.
Wrapping Up in Tauranga
Dinner in town, an early finish. The day had covered a reasonable amount of ground without feeling rushed — a lion cub in the morning, a coastal panorama in the afternoon. Both stayed in the memory clearly, which is usually the sign of a day that worked.
Who This Day Is For
- Anyone wanting to combine wildlife, nature, and coastal scenery in a single day
- Travelers who prefer experiences over schedules
- Anyone who likes hiking with a proper view at the top
- People who are curious about what it would feel like to touch a lion cub (answer: surreal and slightly alarming)
Next post: the Coromandel Peninsula and Whitianga.
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