CROWDED ROTORUA.

Auckland Star, Volume LXX, Issue 305, 27 December 1939, Page 4

CROWDED ROTORUA.

HOUOAT VISITORS.

(From Oar Correspondent.)

ROTORUA, Tuesday.

With the weather during the week-end almost perfect, Rotorua provided a large number of holiday-makers with ideal eight-seeing condition! for the beginning of the Christina* holiday week. Moat of the lakes and thermal and scenic attraction* have been well patronised.

Hotels filled up rapidly, while camping ground* were well patronised by motorists, fulfilling expectations that, in epite of the war, there would be the usual large influx of visitors for the holiday. By last evening there were upward of 350 cars parked in the municipal motor camp, while a heavy increase to-day brought the total there to-night to approximately 600 cars.

The carnival programme was opened last evening with a Maori concert at the lake front and several thousand people attended, while the Christmas tennis tournament attracted a large entry and many spectators. There was a very large crowd assembled at the lake front to-night for the second Maori concert, an unusual attraction being the opening of the Maori hangi, or oven of stones, wherein pork and kumarae had been cooked earlier in the evening.