Thursday 19th March 2009

I do love the smell of sulphur in the morning! On Tuesday we drove to Rotorua, geo-thermal centre of NZ. Here you can take your pick of which natural volcanic wonder to visit, throw in a few adrenalin activities, Maori concerts, hot spa baths or mud baths and soon there’ll be a crater in your pocket as well as the ground. We arrived in drizzle, after a stop at the Karargahake Gorge, once the centre of gold mining in the North Island. A circular walk takes you past remnants of the industry, ruins of the gold stamping batteries and a 1km walk through a railway tunnel, constructed to remove the spoil. Very eerie now, dimly lit with the drip, drip of water and the rumble of cars driving down the gorge all to be heard. Arriving at Rotorua, we dipped into a hot spa bath, opening onto the side of the lake where we soaked whilst watching the steam rise from the geo-thermal currents emptying into the lake. Unlike the volcanic crater forming Lake Taupo, the one forming Lake Rotorua is alive and well! We stayed in the 5-star Youth Hostel and took a walk around the town; the Irish Bar was already filling up at 3pm with all the honorary Irishmen celebrating St. Patricks Day. Well you have to visit one thermal attraction; we chose Wai-O-Tapu, which boasted amongst the usual sulphur pools, silica terraces, bubbling mud and steaming craters a geyser which erupted at 10.15am daily (we were rather amused to find that the owners ensured this happened on time by tipping soap powder down the ferrous stained oriface at the top of the dung-heaped shaped mound) and the Champagne pool, a bubbling water-filled 62m deep volcanic crater. At the bottom the temperature is 230deg, at the top nearer 90deg. Altogether fascinating. It really gives you an understanding of the power under your feet & the instability of the not so quiet earth. In the afternoon we visited the site of an excavated village which had been buried in an eruption in 1886. The Maori guide was a descendant of one of the families who had lived there at the time and gave a vivid account of the event and the lifestyle of the villagers back then. After a day of volcanic warmth, we enjoyed even warmer hospitality in the evening. Those of you who read our Spanish travels may recall the Sierra Nevada trek we enjoyed in the company of Kierstin and Richard of Spanish Highs. Nicola, an old friend of Kierstin kindly invited these two people she had never met to her home, fed us and put us up for the night – Kate even enjoyed a dip in the pool! Much wine was drunk and we had a wonderful evening – many thanks Nicola. The highlight of our exploration of NZs active volcanic subduction zone (see I’ve even got the terminology!) was a helicopter trip and a landing on the crater of White Island(photo-from the helicopter), an active volcano which last erupted in 2000 and can be seen steaming away some 55km off the coast of the Bay of Plenty. The 20min ride out was exciting enough (first time in a helicopter), but the exploration of the crater with our guide was amazing. The smell of the place was almost overwhelming at times, the crater lake apart from being rather hot is so acidic it would immediately melt all trace of anything dropped into it. The rocks were a multitude of yellows, reds, blacks, browns from the minerals present. The power of the landscape was obvious but not just a destructive power – this was effectively creation we were witnessing; all life on earth started out this way. There are already some plants and microbes clinging to life in this hostile environment. Unforgetable.