Tag Archives: Rotorua

Intermission: we take to the trees

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Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Warning! Photographic Nerdery Alert!

The activity that Jane found for us this evening was prompted by a conversation she had with Peter, in whose company we spent the day with Kiwi Dundee, back in the Coromandel Peninsula. He’d mentioned that Sue and he had walked a trail through Redwood trees near Rotorua, the trail being walkways actually up in the trees. Jane discovered that these walkways are open during the evening as well as in the daytime, with the process of teetering in the dark across narrow, bouncy rope suspension bridges leavened by lanterns hung among the trees. I had also heard passing comments by some American tourists in our hotel about doing the Redwood walk, so I knew it was A Thing. It’s also a Popular Thing, so we went late in the hope that the queue might have died down a bit.

There was space in the car park, which was a good omen as we approached the trail.

However, there was a substantial queue,

which an operative opined was about 45 minutes’ worth. I nearly bailed out until I saw the expression on Jane’s face. We joined the back of the queue, which moved slowly forward as people were released into the treewalk. It wasn’t too bad, actually – I suppose we queued for about half an hour – but immediately in front of us was an extremely annoying American student, who clearly came from a wealthy background and spent pretty much the whole time in the queue talking to his companion in a gratingly loud voice about his two million dollar trust fund and what he might do with it when he got his hands on it.

But eventually, at about 2215, we reached the front of the queue and were released into the treewalk. One walks up a spiral ramp to get to the start.  The trail consists, as I’ve said, of narrow and bouncy suspension bridges between platforms; the platforms encircle the trunk of the various trees. The rules said no photography on the bridges and there were theoretically limits on the number of people allowed at any one time on bridges or platforms, but it was never an issue for us – it was not at all crowded once we got started.

The lanterns hung among the trees were pretty spectacular.

The entire lighting was designed by David Trubridge, who specialises in designing pendant lamps, and it’s touted as New Zealand’s “first design-led tourist venture”. There are 85 lanterns in total, with designs inspired by New Zealand’s flora and fauna, including the owl, cicada wings, falcon, and Kowhai flowers. Some more numbers: the walk is 700m long, with 28 suspension bridges and 27 platforms.

The challenge posed by this lighting is capturing it photographically.  I took my Nikon with me on the basis that the bigger sensor would give me the best chance of capturing decent images; and both Jane and I also used our Samsung phones which have a “night shot” facility to help capture images in dark situations.

See? I warned you that there would be some photographic nerdery.

The comparison between what you get with the Nikon and with the phone is quite striking.

Samsung

Nikon – with HDR processing

The night mode of the phone takes multiple images at different exposures and overlays them to fill out dark areas.  On the surface, it looks like the phone has done a good job, but examining the details reveals that the noise processing algorithm as part of night photography has smeared quite a lot of the detail in the darker areas. The Nikon produces a much darker photo, because I dialled in a 2-stop darkening exposure compensation when I took the photo. In the above example, I have tweaked the photo to bring out the darker areas, but it’s still left things quite dark in the margins.  To match what the phone has done, I had to push the exposure back up by those two stops

and apply the world-class noise reduction that DxO Photolab offers. The result looks similar to what the phone produced all on its own, but the details show that the Nikon image is technically cleaner.

I actually took the same photo again on the Nikon, this time without the -2 stop  exposure correction

and this has actually come out really well.  What does this demonstrate?

  1. The phone does a pretty good job if you’re going to showcase your results on the web
  2. For most of the photos I took on the Nikon, I was too aggressive with my exposure compensation; I didn’t do a god job of judging the exposure
  3. But at least with the Nikon I had the option of control. With the phone’s night mode, it makes all the decisions and you’re stuck with those in whatever the results are.

Here’s another comparison, in a section where a laser was playing multiple beams across the trees below the walkway.

Samsung

Nikon

You can see that the multiple images used in the Samsung shot has resulted, unsurprisingly, in a much brighter image with more laser reflections. The Nikon image again is technically much superior, with deeper blacks and much less noise. But which is “better” really resides in the eye of the beholder: which do you prefer?

It was in this area that Jane took a picture to show the bridges that are slung between the platforms.

A fundamental point demonstrated by the exercise of taking photos in these tricky situations is one of individual preference. I took several images of an owl illumination (all with the Nikon), and this is the version I settled on.

I did this by using High Dynamic Range (HDR) processing, taking advantage of a RAW image – I compressed the dark and light parts to bring out the dark areas a bit.  On the other hand, I could have simply pushed the exposure up by two stops, and got this.

Neither is “better” than the other – they’re just different ways of processing a tricky subject. I also took a version without stopping down the exposure so much, and this is what I got.

Now, I think that’s over-exposed. But someone else might not.

We saw again the difference between phone and Nikon later on.

Samsung

Nikon

actually not exactly the same scene, but once again it shows the propensity of the phone to provide a brighter image.

The walkway splits into two about half way round; one can opt to carry on at the same level, which is 9m above the forest floor; or to go up to a higher walkway, about 20m above the ground.

On the higher route, the bridges are outlined in light.

Samsung

Nikon, HDR processed

Nikon, exposure pushed +2 stops

I think what matched best what one saw is shown in the last image; the Samsung photo is dramatic but overdone.

OK, enough with the nerdery.  Here are some more images from the rest of the walkway.

Samsung

Samsung

Samsung

Nikon

Nikon

Samsung

Nikon

Samsung – Jane being artistic

Samsung – me not being artistic

Nikon

We eventually reached the end of the track, with a spiral down that runs outside the spiral up to the start.

As you exit, you pass a section of Redwood trunk cut in 1952. It is, of course, set up as a selfie- or group photo backing

Someone with much better eyesight than me has counted the rings in from the outside to determine that this tree was over 2,000 years old. And then put labels on to show what was going on in the world as the tree grew.

Thought-provoking, eh?

It was fun walking the trail, and, with thanks to Jane, I’m glad I overruled my usual impatience with queuing to walk the trail at night. That was our last activity in Rotorua. Tomorrow, we move on a short way down the road to Taupo. There are a couple of possibly interesting things to see en route and a cruise on Lake Taupo once we’re there. I shall report back and hope you return to read all about it.

 

Kiwi bono?

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Tuesday 17 February 2026 – Apart from the Haka and Brendan McCullum, what New Zealand is best known for is the Kiwi, in all the various connotations of that word – an adjective to describe its inhabitants or its Rugby League team, a brand name for shoe polish (actually developed by an Aussie, but his wife was a New Zealander), a fruit… or the species of the country’s, possibly the world’s, oddest bird. Today we went to the National Kiwi Hatchery to learn more.

I had actually seen Kiwis before, on my last trip to New Zealand, in 1988. I was culturally backward in 1988, but even in those days I knew that Kiwis came from New Zealand, and somehow or other (there was no Google in those days) I found a place then where one could view the birds, in captivity of course, as they’re very difficult to see in the wild, being (a) shy and (b) nocturnal. The place operated 12 hours out of sync with actual time, so that daytime visitors entered a darkened environment in order to see the birds active. I have a clear memory of seeing at least one Kiwi, and possibly even photographing it, but that was nearly forty years ago, my memory has a habit of inventing things and I have no way of finding out if this is true until I get home and can look at the photos from that time. If I can remember where I put them.

So…today, then.

Jane had cleverly averted a major sulk on my part by ensuring I knew in advance that any sort of photography of the birds was not permitted. Kiwis are easily upset by unexpected light and noise, and I (grumpily) accepted that the centre had to be careful because most people (a) use phones, which emit a lot of light and (b) almost certainly have no idea about whether its flash will fire or not, therefore can’t be trusted. Armed with that foreknowledge, off we went.

The first challenge was finding the place. We had an address, but that turned out to be some kind of Māori-themed tourist trap. In the end, Google Maps gave us the place to find, the intriguingly-named Agrodome, which is not a Mad Max style cage fight but is actually a place themed around a family day out on the farm.

The Aardman theme continues once one gets there.

It’s actually quite the operation, running farm tours around what is quite a large area.

They have a variety of livestock, including sheep, goats and cattle. Sheep are their main focus; the gift shop and cafe is housed in the Woollen Mill, where they have an old carding machine

alongside the sales of Pure New Zealand wool in the shop.

They have a pig,

a Kunekune pig (“Kunekune” means “fat and round” in Māori). They also have an ostrich

which has many similarities to a Kiwi – flightless, grumpy and with very strong legs.

This similarity was pointed out on the guided tour that the National Hatchery operates. One is picked up at the Agrodome and taken by minibus to the hatchery centre.

The lass who drove our van was also our guide for our trip

and she did a very good job of explaining about the bird, its environment, its challenges and the role of the hatchery. She also emphasised that photography of the birds would not be permitted before leading us through to where they keep a few (currently three) kiwis in the same inverted time that I saw thirty eight years ago, switching day and night.  As it turns out, it was so dark in there that any sensible photography was simply not feasible anyway, so I didn’t miss out on a photo opportunity.

So: the Kiwi, then. It’s a weird, weird creature.

  • Its feathers are more like hair
  • It has whiskers like a cat
  • In many ways it’s more like a mammal. It has two ovaries; a low body temperature of about 38°C; and marrow in its bones (flighted birds’ bones are honeycombed and hollow to save weight)
  • It is very heavy, which is not a problem because it is flightless. Our guide passed around a couple of fluffy model Kiwis made to weigh the same as a chick and an adult and it was a real surprise: the adult female weighs around 3kg

It is thought to be the world’s most ancient bird, having evolved some 30 million years ago. It developed, of course, with no mammalian predators at all (only avian ones, like hawks or crows), so introduced animals such as ferrets and stoats have wrought much damage to the Kiwi population, and predate Kiwi chicks (though an adult will give a stoat a good kicking, apparently). Even hedgehogs are their enemies, since a hedgehog is not above making a nice proteinaceous meal out of a Kiwi egg.

Ah, yes. The eggs. They are enormous, compared with the bird in which they develop.

Somehow or other, a female Kiwi can develop an egg like that in about a week. An X-ray gives an extraordinary picture.

One wonders how uncomfortable it is for the poor bird to deliver it, but somehow she does, and she delivers it into the care of the male (with whom she is likely bonded monogamously). Then, because she hasn’t had anything to eat for a week because of the size of the egg, she goes off to find food, developing the while a second egg (from her other ovary), which she then also delivers into the male’s care. That is then her job done; she has no further interest in eggs or chicks at all.  The bloke Kiwi has to incubate these eggs for 80 days before they hatch. When they do, the chicks are basically fully-formed Kiwis who need no teaching about how to feed themselves, which is just as well, since the male makes no effort to teach them anything.

There are actually five types of Kiwi; the North Island has mainly Brown Kiwis, about 25,000 of them. The other types are: Rowi Kiwi, about the same size as a Brown Kiwi, but a greyer colour, and critically endangered with around 500 birds at the moment; Great Spotted Kiwi, the largest and toughest, spotted only on the South Island; Little Spotted Kiwi, which is, erm, small, and exists almost entirely in remote island colonies; and Tokoeka Kiwi, the Southern Brown Kiwi, which we might get to see later on this trip as it is not entirely nocturnal.

Unsurprisingly there were some stuffed kiwis for us to look at.  A male

The red tag is to allow tracking. If it’s not moving, it’s incubating an egg, which can be brought to the hatchery

and a female

To be absolutely certain in distinguishing one sex from the other it is necessary to analyse their DNA, but typically males are smaller and skinnier, and females larger and rounder. One can see their whiskers

and (if one looks very carefully) their nostrils, which are at the end of their bills, making them officially the birds with the shortest beaks in the world. It is possible to make a coat out of their feathers

and this would be for extremely high-ranking Māori. It takes a lot of birds to make a coat like that, and, these days, the species is under threat.  The National Hatchery exists to try to increase the chances of survival of Kiwi eggs. There are about 68,000 Kiwi left in all of New Zealand and the nation is losing 2% of its unmanaged Kiwi every year. The Brown Kiwi population is steadily declining by about 1-2% a year. Without ongoing support, experts estimate it will be extinct in the wild within two generations: only 50% of Kiwi eggs in the wild hatch; of those that do, only 5% of the resulting chicks survive to adulthood. The centre has overseen the successful hatching of nearly 3,000 eggs since it came into operation some 20 years ago.

The final part of our tour was to see the support the centre gives for hatching chicks. Eggs are located using a variety of tactics, such as tagging the males – if they’re stationary, they’re likely incubating – to locate eggs and bring them to the hatchery. They are carefully incubated, the chicks are microchipped, checked for health, measured and fed to bring them to the point where they are heavy and strong enough to withstand a stoat and so can be released back into the wild; they are then set free in the same region that the egg was found. This is not traumatic for either the male or the chick, since the former doesn’t care for the latter and the latter is pretty much ready for the wild and hasn’t imprinted at all on people during its time in the hatchery.  It’s a funny old business, but deeply interesting to learn about what they do and to find out how extraordinarily weird these creatures are.

That was our scheduled activity for the day. Rather than relaxing for the rest of it, Jane (of course) found Something Interesting To Do in the evening. That will be the subject of the next post. Heads-up – there will be a certain amount of photographic nerdery in it as well as some pretty pictures.

Mud, mud, gurgling mud

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Monday 16 February 2026 – Having checked in yesterday and indulged in a cup of Twining’s Finest Earl Grey, we found ourselves with a little time on our hands. So we went for a walk. Obviously.

We had a bit of a side trip as part of my tiresome tireless search for an electric toothbrush, because the cheapo Colgate battery-driven number I’d bought in Auckland turned out to be pretty rubbish.  Our walk to Woolworth’s took us past quite a fine mural.

Shame about the graffiti on it, though.  However I know that you will share my (and Jane’s) delight that my search for a toothbrush proved moderately successful!

Our hotel is pretty much beside the lake, so it was a short walk to take an overview. Its geothermal pedigree is on clear display (and, of course, you can smell it, too – there’s a distinct “rotten eggs” niff of Hydrogen Sulphide in the air.

Jane had discovered that there is a walkway beside the lake out to a place called Sulphur Point, so we took it

whilst being sure to be careful because of the not-inconsiderable danger of death that seems to lurk round every corner.

As we walked along, we noted a vast flock of gulls by the lakeside.

I had assumed that the waters of the lake would be too toxic to support aquatic life, but apparently there are fish in the lake for the gulls to eat alongside insect and plants.

The walkway led past some black swans

who were doing the duck dive thing, which I’ve not seen before.  At Sulphur Point there are a couple of pieces of art

“Waters of Rotorua”, by Rory McDougall. No, me neither

lots of gulls, some greylag geese and swamp hens.

There’s also been a strong effort to make the loo look pretty.

It was getting late by this stage,

and the light on the lake was lovely.

We hastened back to the hotel, walking through Government Garden and passing the museum, sadly largely covered in scaffolding and sheeting, but the exposed areas of which look very attractive.

Government Garden is a handsome place

and houses, among other things, a Māori Teahouse.

That was yesterday. Today was set to be Geothermal Day. Our itinerary took us to Orakei Korako, a geothermal park. When I visited New Zealand back in 1988, I based myself in Auckland and explored by simply driving as far as I could on day trips, one of which was to Rotorua, which is when I experienced its heady aroma for the first time. In those days I was neither culturally aware nor in possession of a guide book; all I wanted to see was some boiling mud. If memory serves, I did, although I can’t place exactly where I found it. But I must have seen some, otherwise the angst of having gone all that way and not found any to look at would have stayed with me for those intervening 38 years. So, I had high expectations of a boiling mud persuasion for today.

Orakei Korako is about an hour’s drive from Rotorua, through some typically quirky North Island scenery

and past significant evidence of vast amounts of logging.

It’s astonishing the amount of planting that has gone on of Monterey Pine trees, which are grown for the making of paper, since Eucalyptus doesn’t flourish here. There are impossibly steep slopes covered in these pine trees; I couldn’t imagine how they were even planted, let alone how the logging was done. But, clearly, it is done, and is a significant industry in the area.

Geothermal activity is a brutal thing, involving huge temperatures and pressures (and, I was hoping, boiling mud, of course). Orakei Korako has managed to put an entirely charming and low-key package together to showcase it.  One parks lakeside, and is given a friendly but serious safety briefing (basically not to stray from the  boardwalks, as this can be fatal) when collecting tickets, and is then transported across to the actual brutal bit on a cute little ferry.

The walk round the park takes 60 – 90 minutes, and is very well laid out, with maps and info boards to show you where you are and what you’re seeing.  It was pleasantly quiet, with just a few people wandering about in the park. The boardwalks are easy to navigate,

though there is quite a bit of up-and-down as you pass and view the various sites.

It is a typically “blasted landscape”

with considerable evidence of sulphur, and steam rising in many places, often above boiling pools.

Some areas have names; this, for example, is called the “Artist’s Palette”.

It wasn’t particularly colourful today, but apparently under some circumstances it can be overrun by boiling water, which is an ideal growth platform for algae of a wide variety of colours.

I was feeling that there was a bit too much emphasis on pools of boiling water, when we came across this sign.

So, after a quick look at the cave

we hastened down so I could get my fill of boiling mud, mud, gurgling mud!

If you want to see the mud in action, I included it in this overview video of the place wot I produced,

which also gives a better idea of the scale of the place than any of the photos we took. It’s very nicely laid out and pleasantly uncrowded; we enjoyed our visit immensely.

We had to get back to the hotel in time to be collected and taken to our evening’s activity, a Māori “cultural experience”, a description apt to send a shudder up the spine. Ours was to be hosted at Te Puia, which John at Kiwi Dundee had described as “legit”, so I wasn’t absolutely dreading it.

A bus came to pick us up at around 5.15 for the short journey to the place.

We filed in through the arch and joined a whole heap of people who were there for the evening’s entertainment to witness a Māori welcome ceremony. In real life, of course, it has the possibility of going sadly wrong unless you know what you’re doing, but we had a host marshalling us around; he picked a sucker volunteer from the crowd to be the “visiting chief” and made sure that he didn’t get stuck by an angry challenger.

His job was to approach the pavilion which houses the “natives”.

 

…who come out to look you over…
…and send a couple of chaps down to challenge.
A fearsome display, then…
…placing a token to assess your intent
It’s important to pick this up calmly…
…and retreat. This is the point at which it could go wrong.

Some final display then leads to the visitors being accepted and led into the pavilion. I have video, but you get the idea.

Inside, we are treated, as you might expect, to an exposition of native culture – a welcome speech from the “chief”, singing, dancing, explanation of the cultural and practical significance of dance accessories and weapons, and, of course, the haka, which is probably the single most famous Māori cultural export of New Zealand. If you’re a rugby fan. Again, I have video, so, erm, here is some of it.

It was by and large a jolly pleasing noise, but one thing struck me as unexpected. Not that I wish to accuse anyone of cultural appropriation, but there were a lot of familiar western harmonies in the songs they sang….

Following this was a part of the evening which I least expected and most enjoyed – a visit to the centre’s resident geyser*, Pōhutu. It was preceded by a session around a firepit where Māori cuisine was discussed as a prelude to the “Māori feast” we would have later, and then we all trooped down into the Te Whakarewarewa geothermal area in the centre to hope that Pōhutu would do its stuff before we had to troop back and eat.

It took a while – some twenty minutes of gradual buildup – but it was pretty spectacular when it finally came to the party.

The meal was set out as a buffet, and quite a massive one at that. Jane and I had been allocated Table 12, and were both pretty glad to find that it was a table for two. We partook reasonably lightly of the buffet, unlike the couple next to us, who came from (I think) Finland and could reasonably be described as comfortably upholstered.  She had a dessert between two visits to the main course buffet stations, and he had just started on his third main course plateful – the third being after a dessert – as we left. A short bus ride took us back to the hotel, and that was it for the day, and a very enjoyable one it was, too, loaded as it was with many things geothermal of which we don’t see much in the UK.

I said that the Haka was New Zealand’s most famous cultural export, but there is, of course, an even more iconic, erm, icon of the country. This is what we shall learn about tomorrow. See you then?

 

 

*  Pronounced “guyzer”,by the way. A “geezer” is who was taking photos of it.