Rotorua: What to do and where to start

There's a million things to see and do in Rotorua - here's a small selection to get you started.

Government Gardens

Rotorua Museum is a good place to begin your Rotorua adventure. You can find out about Rotorua's history, which is brought to life with a range of exhibitions.

Explore the fabulous Bath House - New Zealand's most photographed building - and enjoy the high impact cinema experience Rotorua Stories.

The Blue Baths

Are within Government Gardens. You can take tea, 1930s style, in the elegant tea rooms of Rotorua's historic Blue Baths. The meticulously restored building offers visitors the chance to bathe in crystal clear thermally heated waters.

A museum in the old changing rooms showcases the building's colourful past with videos and displays.

Agrodome

Offers sheep shows three times daily, where you can see 19 breeds of champion ram on stage. Watch a shearing display and sheepdog trial. Feed baby lambs, milk a cow and visit the farm yard nursery.

Experience the great outdoors and tour a 121ha sheep and cattle farm on traditional horseback. Take a guided tour in an all-weather all-terrain farm bus.

Kayaking

The only way to see Rotorua's lakes at a leisurely pace is by kayaking. Your journey can be broken with nature walks, visits to hot water pools and some awesome scenery. Trips can be two hours or two days.

Agrojet

Are you a thrill-seeker? A speed freak? Adventurous? Then the Agrojet race boat may be your calling. A 450 HP jet-propelled, 4m race boat, the newest in extreme entertainment, will deliver you up to 100km/h in 4 seconds, quick cornering and super G-force excitement. A five-minute adrenalin-pumping, hair-raising experience that is guaranteed to take your breath away.

Air Adventure Centre

Whether it's a challenge of making a tandem skydive from 3657m above Rotorua attached to your instructor or experiencing the thrill of aerobatics in a Second World War Boeing Stearman open cockpit plane.

Hell's Gate Thermal Reserve

Rotorua's most active thermal reserve. Experience the earth's raw power yet feel the soft hot water of Sulphur Lake and the finest geothermal mud used as a base for thermal mud packs.

See geysers, steam vents, boiling mud pools and the largest hot waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere.

NZ Maori Arts & Crafts Institute

New Zealand's premier Maori culture and geothermal visitor experience features the world famous Pohutu Geyser, midday Maori concert, Maori carving, weaving a Maori village and an evening show and hangi.

Polynesian Spa Polynesian Spa is located in downtown Rotorua and has 35 bathing pools, including a large hot mineral pool and eight hot springs for adults only, private pools, a family spa with a fresh water pool, a toddlers' pool. The mineral waters at Polynesian Spa are renowned for their health-giving properties.

Fletcher Challenge Forest Visitor Centre

The Whakarewarewa Forest recreation area has world class running, walking and mountain biking tracks, as well as tranquil picnic areas - all within five minutes' drive of Rotorua.

Set among magnificent Californian Coastal Redwoods, the visitor centre has information about the forest and how to access it.

Tikitere Gardens

Tikitere Gardens and Nursery has 12ha of landscaped planting including many unusual and beautiful plants. Truly a garden for all seasons.

The Orchid Gardens

Amble down garden paths among colourful flowering orchids and soak up the therapeutic harmony of cascading waterfalls in a serene tropical atmosphere.

Source: Tourism Rotorua