Rotorua Weekend

Friday 3rd August - Sunday 5th August

If this is your first time in New Zealand, it is highly recommended you visit this town of great cultural significance. Rotorua is an active volcanic zone and home to New Zealand’s world-famous boiling mud pools and geysers. On this trip you will have a fantastic opportunity to witness these natural wonders, learn about the local Maori culture and eat a hangi lunch. Another highlight of the weekend will be relaxing at the local well kept secret – Kerosene Creek, a 100% natural hot spring that features a hot waterfall surrounded by native forest. Students who came on the Rotorua trip last year said that swimming in Kerosene Creek was one of the best experiences they’d had in New Zealand. We’ll also do a bit of a tiki-tour around town to take in some of Rotorua’s best sights. Our accommodation has a geothermally heated swimming pool and an awesome location within easy walking distance of the night-life hub, a free geothermal park and Lake Rotorua.

This trip has been organised to be as affordable as possible. We have awesome discounts for the optional activities for those of you who want to do it all, but if you would rather just come along for the ride and do your own thing in Rotorua, that’s fine too.

Cost: $185 for Unitec students; $200 for everyone else

Includes transport, accommodation, lunch every day (Sunday is a hangi), breakfast on Sat and Sun, BBQ dinner on Saturday, sightseeing in Rotorua and at Blue Lake, swimming at Kerosene Creek and entrance to Te Puia at Whakarewarewa Thermal Valley (Sunday).

Optional Activities:

  • Hobbiton Movie Set Tour $83.50 A behind the scenes tour of the L.O.T.R. set.

  • Rotorua Zorb: $25 Roll down a hill inside a giant water-filled hamster ball!
  • Rotorua Luge: $11.75 for the gondola + $6.50 per luge ride There’s no ice involved in kiwi-style luging, just you, your friends, gravity-powered go-carts and a concrete track. So much fun!
  • White water rafting: $70 A great, adrenaline-inducing way to experience the natural beauty of Rotorua. Help paddle your raft over surging, raging rapids including a massive waterfall, that, at 7m, is the highest commercially rafted waterfall in the world! The Kaituna River winds its way between high cliffs lined with native forest, and dotted with caves that were historically used as hideouts by Maori women and children at times of war.
  • Agroventures adventure park is home to some crazy “only in New Zealand” experiences that are tonnes of fun if you’re game enough to try them. For $25 you can go jet-boating, or have a go on a free-fall simulator, or race on a pedal-powered monorail, or go for a “swoop” – a bungy swing from 40m (some people say it’s just as terrifying as a bungy jump). Or, for $65, you can actually take the plunge and do a bungy jump.