Okere Falls — Attraction in North Island

Okere Falls Scenic Reserve has significant Maori cultural and spiritual 🙏 value and features the waterfalls 💦 and cascades of the Kaituna River, including the highest commercially rafted 🛶 waterfall in the world 🌎

There are four beautiful falls located on the Okere River 💦 and just to make it confusing the Okere River is actually an 11km part of the Kaituna River 🤔

There is a lovely walk 🚶‍♂️🚶‍♀️ through bush (left side of the main carpark). It takes in the cascades (which I saw) and waterfalls all the way through to the Trout Pool 🐟The track is 1.2km long. You can then either wind your way back via Trout Pool Rd or backtrack and take in the falls again 👀

Although the track is fairly easy; you veer off to go down timber steps to the viewing platforms for one of the falls 😀

They change to steepish rock steps (called Hinemoa's Steps) taking you further down towards the water and these can get slippery when wet 😲

Because of heavy rains, everything was wet and muddy, with slippery decaying leaves 🍁🍂 everywhere I only dared to go to two viewing platforms in my jandals 🩴 Unfortunately it does mean I missed out on seeing the falls in all its glory ✨️

The water was extremely rapid! I am surprised at how loud and strong it is. It was actually a bit scary 😨 but so...

Has a big parking area with toilets, tables and seating. Is a nice covered walkway with 4 different areas to check out, 1st being Okere falls lookout (says 1min is really 30seconds if that from toilets). 2nd is hinemoa's steps and Tutea's Cave from here the walk gets a little harder as you have to go down some steps where you'll see Tutea falls from platform, then you'll have to go down Hinemoa's steps to get to the bottom "Tutea's Cave" where you can go in and look around (make sure to take torch to see better/or use your phone light) then you'll have to go back the way you came, up the steps. Then you can carry on to see trout pool falls where people use the trees and swing to jump in for swim as the strong current carries them down river. Then once you get back to carpark there's a very easy walk down some steps in the corner, which leads you to a platform right up close to waters edge to see the raging...

One of the better places around Rotorua. The biggest relief is there are no ticket charges to visit this place which otherwise is common for all the other tourist attraction in Rotorua.

Well, this waterfall is not a big one. Its rather quite small waterfall but I guess it had been famous for the hydro electric generation back in the old days as there is a old turbine put up for display. Its hardly a minute walk to the waterfall from the parking lot. Also there are few walk trails leading upto other tourist spot, ahead of this waterfall. There is a proper sign board for it. One being the Tutea waterfall. The trees in this area are quite dense so walking around the area on a sunny day would be a pleasure for all. Also bear in mind that this place is not stroller friendly at all.

This place is a definite checkout if you are in Rotorua as its hardly 20km from Rotorua. So please go enjoy...