SIX LAKES TRIP

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 570, 29 June 1933, Page 8

SIX LAKES TRIP

The Six Lakes trip is in the nature 1 of a luxury trip — Tikitere excepted. | Leaving Rotoroa, the road follows 1 the eastern shore of Rotorua Lake | and commands fine views of the lake | and Mokoia Island. The country to | the right marks the scene of early | ' native missionary enterprise, and | here the first English missionaries | were successful in planting hedge- 2 rows and wooded areas. Nowhere else p in the world is there such an intense | concentration of heat as found at Ti- U kitere. The hardest rock is reduced to a violently agitate'd molten mass, impregnated with acids, and casting off a variety of noxious fumes. The tourist is escorted through the labyrinth bearing such names as Hell's Gate, the Devil's Porridge Pot, Sodom and Gommorrah, the Devil's Rocking Chair, 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 cliffs, sequestered bays and inlets, delightful i beaches, form a superb picture of i natural beauty. Leaving Rotoiti, the j car enters the famous Hongi's Track, \ along which the formidable warrior | frequently passed and where still | flourish the Sacred and the Hang- p man's Tree. Lakes Rotoehu and P Rotoma embrace scenery into | which every element of beauty en- I ters; and by the roadside between the | lakes, the wonderful soda, magnesia, | and iron spring is visited. The | road branching off to Lake Okataina 1 leads for nearly five miles through g magnificent native bush. Okataina p Lake has played a classical part in the life of the early natives. Hidden 0 among superb bush-covered hills, 1 canoes moved freely across its waters P to mysteriou^ pahs and secret burial , ® places long before the appearance i of the white man. Lake Rotokawa fills j a voleano crater that became extinct ages ago. The lake has inaccessible, precipitous sides and lies like a gem in an amphitheatre of bush.