I woke up to rain. I left the hostel and headed for the redwood forest. By mistake, but also because I was following my GPS, I went to the wrong place. I ended up at a cultural and geothermal center. I saw steam bellowing out of the shrubbery so I was intrigued. I attempted to go in but was halted by a $35 fee. All I wanted to do was walk around for a bit but Rotorua is so touristy that no matter what you do, there is a business attached to it. I just think it's odd that a natural place is controlled by a company so you have no choice but to pay to enter.
Anyways, I finally found the redwoods. It was so cool! So many big tall trees and so pretty. They had a neat canopy walkway attached to the tree trunks about 40 feet up but of course you had to pay to go up there. I walked along one of the pathways for a bit then headed out. I drove to Kuirau Park and there was a flea market going on. It wasn't very big but I walked through it and then around the park to all of the little geothermal pools. There were about a half a dozen of them. One of them was converted into a bath where you could dip your feet into. I tried it out.
I then went to the shopping center for a little while. The girl from last night told me about one of the animal parks in town and said that you can hold lion cubs there. I would actually like tiger cubs more but I supposed lion cubs would do. I drove a little ways out of town to the park and went to the front desk. Sadly, they didn't have any cubs at the moment and it was also pretty spendy to get into the exhibits so I bagged it.
I heard of the Hamurana Springs so I drove 20 minutes out the other direction to check them out. On my way there, I got really sleepy and it was still raining pretty hard so once I got to the parking lot, I just stayed in the car and ended up taking an hour long nap. Afterwards, I drove back into Rotorua and kept going south towards Taupo. I ended up at a pullout on a small lake where there were a few other caravan campers too. There wasn't much of good spot to put my tent and it was getting late so I just made a nest and reclined in my front seat. It wasn't too bad of a nights rest.
