Being gluttons for punishment and believing you can’t have too much of a good thing, the next day we headed onwards to Te Puia, and were rewarded with the best mud pools yet – really farty, plopping ones, and two fantastic geysers. The Prince of Wales Feathers sets off first, and then is totally eclipsed by Pohutu – meaning big splash. Well it managed to splash very bigly for at least twenty minutes, and it was an incredibly first geyser moment for us. We were getting a little thermal-ed out, so we raced past most of the attraction, also bewailing the fact that all these areas are separate and privately owned. Oh how much better it would be as one big national park.
So we had ‘done’ Rotorua and loved it, but were ready to head further south. On the way however Jenna needed the toilet, so we stopped in at Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland. Joe renamed it “Wai-o-wai another flaming thermal area’ but it actually turned out to be the best of all. Here you could venture very close to the pools, streams and waterfalls, including the southern hemisphere’s biggest hot waterfall and mud pools to die for. We intrepidly took the longest route, and got some of the isolation and proximity to the wonders that had been missing from other parks. The champagne pool is simply amazing – incredibly deep, surrounded by land coral and a bright orange crust, it fizzes like champagne through all the carbon dioxide rising into a perfect green pool. After this however we had DEFINITELY ‘done’ geothermal wonders for a lifetime, and so we drove past the huge Lake Taupo. Nowhere in the world is the earth’s crust thinner. When Lake Taupo erupted in AD 181 there were records of darkened skies and amazing sunsets as far away as Rome and China. The column rose 50 kilometres into the air, and a layer of ash 4 kilometres deep buried New Zealand. It’s one of the biggest eruptions in history, spewing out 33 billion tons of pumice. Thankfully, the Maoris had not colonised the land at this point, as everything was devastated. Its still a very fragile and active area, with the crater lake just south in Tongariro threatening to spill out at any point, and daily tremors. The last time the crater lake bust, it washed away everything in its path with a 30 metre high wall of water, including a railway line and the train which was on it – one carriage was found 5 kilometres ‘downstream’ with the loss of 150 lives.
So visiting this area felt gave a rare and slightly risky into the power of the earth. It was certainly a great way to pass a few rainy days!
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