SIX LAKES TRIP

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 599, 2 August 1933, Page 8

SIX LAKES TRIP

The Six Lakes trip is in the nature of a luxury trip — Tikitere excepted. Leaving Rotorua, the road follows 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 hedgerows and wooded areas. Nowhere else in the world is there such an 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. 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 beaches, form a superb picture of natural beauty. Leaving Rotoiti, the car enters the famous Hongi's Track, along which the formidable warrior frequently passed and where still flourish the Sacred and the Hangman's Tree. 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 iron spring is visited. The road branching off to Lake Okataina leads for nearly five miles through magnificent native bush. Okataina Lake has played a classical part in the life of the early natives. Hidden among superb bush-covered hills, canoes moved freely across its waters to mysterious pahs and secret burial places long before the appearance of the white man. Lake Rotokawa fills a volcano crater that became extinct ages ago. The lake has inaccessible, precipitous sides and lies like a gem in an amphitheatre of bush.