Day Three of Trip-Rotorua Day One

This is Rainbow Springs. Our first Activity on Monday morning. It promised in the brochure to be full of plant and animal life and great fun. We were really excited. It was beautiful but not more beautiful than all of the plants we saw on our hike in Taupo.

The bird enclosures were fun because you went inside the cages with the birds and they could fly around you. Up close and personal as they say. Very nice.

Here is a Tui-one of my favorite birds here. I think I told you about it before on here, but as a review it has two voice boxes and can make many many different and delightful sounds. They are all over and we love to hear them make music.

This was the coolest duck I have ever seen. It has a brown tuft around its head that reminds me of an old hairy man smoking a cigar and trying not to light his mustache on fire. I LOVE these but have yet to find their name. Does anyone know?

This is the famous Weka bird. It is flightless like many birds here and it is supposed to be very curious and feisty. Garrett works on Weka St. (just in case you wanted to know).

If you look at what Ezra is looking at in this picture you will see the spring running. You can pay to fill up your water bottle or buy a container and fill it to take with you. We each cupped our hands and tasted the water and it was very good. You could taste the minerals in it. I thought it was very refreshing.

Enoch ran ahead of us up those steps and as we came up to the top he cam running towards us with a whole bunch of chickens chasing him. It was so funny.

People feed these chickens when they come to visit and the chickens followed us around hoping to be fed. They let you pet them and are very friendly. There were a whole bunch of babies.

Ethne was really afraid but we warmed her up to them after a little while.

Here come some more running for their lives hoping they didn't miss the feast.

sheep- nothing really interesting about this one.

Don't bother with the double take this is not in fact Elizabeth Taylor playing Cleopatra. It is an actual bird. Although, truth being told, Camilla and I had the exact same thought when we saw it.

This was the funniest pig any of us had ever seen. It's ugliness just can't be seen in the photos though. It was really a hideous pig.

It actually looks a little cute here, but I promise you it was quite frightening to look at.

Rainbow Springs was fun to walk around but it was a lot smaller than we had expected and there just wasn't that much to do see and do there. We had a good time but won't be doing it again.

After this we went home and got our swim clothes and went to the Polynesian Spa. That was a lot of fun. We got to sit in the hot water and soak up the minerals into our skin. They say the water has healing properties and I have to say I believe it. I felt REALLY ill when we went. I had felt sick to my stomach and flu-ish. After soaking for a while I went back to the hotel and showered and I felt much much better. It was wonderful. All 6 of us went for about $50NZD and I would have to say it was worth it and if we hadn't had so many other activities planned we would have gone a second day.

That night we went to the grocery store and bought food for the next several days and had soup for dinner and put the kids to bed late.