Rotorua, one of New Zealand’s most popular tourist locations, is a smelly town surrounded by lakes with sulfur borders and geothermal vents that send steam into the sky and with it an eggy odor. This is the location of my latest New Zealand adventure.

We were warned it would smell.

We were expecting it to smell.

But we still were not prepared for it to smell THAT much.

The entire town smells like rotten eggs. Not just near the lake, not just near the vents, not just in the park we visited called “geothermal wonderland.” No. Literally the entire town smelled like rotten eggs, the smell could not be escaped while walking around. On Saturday morning we went to a farmers market in one of the parks, you would have thought every booth was selling eggs by the smell of it. On Saturday night we went to a cute little Japanese restaurant down a side street in town, not one of us ordered eggs, but it still smelled like it. On Sunday we drove through town to get gas for the trip home, by the smell, maybe, just maybe, we were filling our car with egg instead of gas. The smell almost became normal, as it became a weird sensation the times we drove out of town and were met by fresh air.

This happened Saturday mid-day when we went zorbing. Zorbing, in case you are uninformed, is the art of rolling down a hill in a giant inflatable ball. It’s one of the uniquely New Zealandy things to do around here and feels a lot like you are a hamster in a ball on a water slide, as they fill the zorb with hot bath water and then push you down the steep slope. The zorb did not smell like eggs, much to our appreciation!

It also did not smell like eggs on Saturday night at our campsite. We pitched tents on a smaller late about a 15 minute drive out of town. It was freezing cold, but it was worth being frozen as on this secluded lake, looking up, we could see all the stars in the sky. I don’t remember the last time I saw so many stars in one place, covering the entire sky like a blanket and only being broken by the occasional cloud.

lastly, it did not smell like eggs in the Redwood forest we visited that is also a Rotorua attraction. Here we took upon ourselves to complete a 6 km hike up and around the Redwood forest and to an overlook viewing many mountains and the city of Rotorua.

It was an excellent weekend filled with good fun, good fun, and iffy smells.