Last full day on the Royal Princess was extremely enjoyable as we did a tour out of Tauranga to Rotorua. Before we left, we decided to try the ship’s main dining room breakfast, it wasn’t terribly exciting.
Our full day tour covered a lot of ground and the best of what the Bay of Plenty area had to showcase with two of the most popular attractions. We had a personal driver/guide that transported us in a luxury van via Pilot Bay, Marine Parade and Ocean Beach Road en route to Rotorua to visit Te Puia, home of the famous Pohutu Geyser and the Māori Arts & craft Institute. We also saw a park with huge 100yr+ redwood forest with treetop walks, certainly worth a proper visit.
At Te Puia we enjoyed an excellent guided tour around the geothermal valley seeing boiling mud pools, Hot Springs, Geysers, the iconic NZ Kiwi bird and an example of traditional Māori architecture, The Rotowhio marae and wharenui (meeting house).
Our visit to Te Puia included a traditional kiwi Hangi inspired buffet lunch at the Pataka Kai Café.
Next, we travelled just down the road to the Polynesian Spa where we immersed ourselves in New Zealand's original geothermal hot pools experience with a soak in the Deluxe Lake View Spa (with towel & lockers provided). It was a great experience, certainly do it again sometime in the future.
Our journey to Rotorua/return included coastal roads, countryside, forestry and lakes and travels directly through New Zealand's premium kiwifruit growing region. Our driver/guide highlighted the importance of the iconic kiwifruit to New Zealand and point out the orchards with the unusual growing kiwi fruit.
After the tour we head back into the port and township of Tauranga to take a brief exploration. Lovely town full of restaurants, cafes and activities.
Tomorrow we leave the ship so no entertainment tonight as we will be packing to disembark.
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