Six Lakes Trip

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 358, 20 October 1932, Page 8

Six Lakes Trip

The Six Lakes trip is in t.he nature ©f a luxury trip — Tikitere excepted. Leaving Rotorua, tlie road follows the eastern shore of Rotorua Lalce and commands fine iews of the lake and Mokoia Island. The country to the right marks the scene of early native missionary enterprise, and here the first English missionar'es were successful in planting hedgerows and wooded areas in true English landscape style. The route is in part typically English and merges into the weirdest and most dangerous locality in the whole of the thermal regions, for nowhere else in the world is there such axt intense concentration of heat as found at Tikitere. The hardest rock is reduced to a violently agitated molten mass, impregnated with acids, and casting off a variety of noxious fumes. No effort is required to picture the inferno that lies not far beneath the surface, and that finds escape in the form of hlinding steam, issuing through treacherous, seething depths of mud. At Tikitere a guide is compulsory; the tourist is escorted through the labyrinth bearing such names as Hell's Gate, the Devil's Porridge Pot, Sodom and Gomorrah, the Devil's Rocking Ghair, etc. Without a guide, Tikitere is dangerous. Passing Tikitere, Lake Rotoiti comes within view. The many wooded indentations of this favourite lake, the background of bush, sheer eliffs, sequestered bays and inlets, delightful beaches, form a superb picture of natural beauty. Its shores are dotted with ancienc Maori settlements and said to contain specimens of native carvings, the most faultless of their kind. Leaving Rotoiti, the car enters the famous Hongi's Track, along which the formidable warn'or frequently passed and where still flourish the Sacred and the Hangman's Tree; the haunts of spirits whose goodwill and protection are sought to this day by Maoris passing along the track, and propitiatory offerings in the shape of wreaths and green leaves are still placed at the base of the trees. Lakes Rotoehu and Rotoma embrace scenery into which every element of beauty enters; and by the roadside between the lakes, the wonderful soda, magnesia, and iromspring is visited. The spring, sparkling and clear as crystal, is of unique curative value. Here the naturalist is in his element; the lakes and the dense bush surrounding them serve as a sanctuary for birds that elsewhere are becoming rare. The bittern is freuently to be seen and the note of the kiwi heard. The road branching off to Lake Okataina leads for nearly five miles through magnificent native bush. Here the glories of New Zealand's primeval forest and clustered ferm, the habitat of the bell bird, the tui, and others whose notes attain extraordinsiry purity, are seen to perfection, and in an environment that for centuries has remained unchanged. Okataina Lake has played a classical part in the l'ife of the early natives. Hidden among superb busn-covered hills, canoes moved freely across its waters to mysterious pahs and secret burial places long before the appearance of the white man; and traces of bygone history in the form of derelict pahs and burial places are still to be seen. Lake Rotokawau fills the crater of a volcano that became extinct ages ago. The lake has inaccessible, precipitous sides and lies like a gem in an amphitheatre of bush. Fish, knowing no fear of the enemy, swarm in its quiet, unfathomable waters.