Waiotapu and Rainbow Mountain
We left off yesterday after a long day of exploring central Rotorua. Now on the 18th of July, I set out early from town for the 30-minute drive down to Waiotapu to be ready for the Lady Knox Geyser eruption at Waiotapu Geothermal Wonderland at 10 am. After getting my ticket at the visitor’s centre, I then quickly made a little trip into the geothermal park passing an emerald green pool, some crevasses straight out of Mordor, and the fog over the Champagne pool.
Sneak peek from the park
Then hopping back in my car and driving over to the Geyser for the show. The fact that it erupts at exactly 10 a clock is a bit fake, they start the reaction by putting soap in the geyser, but it would naturally erupt once a day, so also not fabricated. Anyway, it was a stunning sight seeing this white boulder progressively start foaming more and more before spewing out an almost ten-metre tall pillar of water, all accompanied by Maori song.
The Lady Knox Geyser
Well, back at the main Geothermal Park, I could actually start my tour proper. Beginning by crossing a small river, feed by a steaming creak lined with vibrantly green algae, you enter into a sulphurous landscape that looks more like it belongs on the foothills of the Mountains of Shadow, than the real world. Deep craters of grey porous rock flanked by rugged bushes, the sides lined with red and yellow sulphur, at the bottoms steaming and spluttering water or mud emerging, all covered in curtains of fog in the cold air.
Next great pools of mud, covered in a thin layer of rainwater, bubbling, before walking through a small grove and being faced by the Artist’s pallet on the left, and the thick fog of the Champagne pool on the right. The Artist’s pallet is a maybe 20 cm deep wide pool dotted with differently coloured pores bubbling up, filled from the overflow of the Champagne pool. It’s overflow, then in turn spills over the northeastern slope where the calcites have built thousands of small terraces containing tiny little pools.
Walking across a boardwalk over the pallet, the path then brought me up a hill, offering a wider perspective of the spectacle below. Down again and across the small stream formed by the overflow, just in front of a “waterfall” of the hot water dribbling down a steep rock face now covered in terraced algae. Following another steaming white stream, the path next brought us through a pass, with a detour out to see an oyster-shaped bubbling cyan pool in the sulphur flats, and a bright yellow sulphur cave.
The final destination of the trail was a lookout over a large pastel green lake, feed by a more forceful little steaming waterfall, ringed by carniferous trees. It’s hard to put into words how wondrously weird this whole experience is for someone used to the ground being a stable and dependable thing. The combination of just above freezing temperatures in the air and then getting blanketed in a warm white smelly fog, or having the literal ground below you being eaten up by the acidic (or alternatively alkaline) hot water steaming from the ground. Or a whole great lake just being green, like pure green, and this was on an overcast day which doesn’t even present the highest saturations possible.
Heading back the same way I came, the last stop was to really enjoy the Champagne pool alluded to before. This is a 65-metre in diameter and very deep pool of 70 degree water, all fizzling like carbonated water or, well, champagne. Rimmed by the most beautiful reds and yellows from the preciouse and heavy metals deposited from the evaporating water.
The Champagne Pool
And that was my visit to the main Waiotapu park, but my geothermal experiences of the day wasn’t even close to over. My next stop was just a few hundred metres down the road, the Hot ‘n’ Cold creak. Which is basically a small creak into which hot water wells up, and you can swim in. I had brought swimming stuff, but didn’t really feel like it as the weather was very cold, so instead I had my lunch sandwiches there. Another argument would have been that there live brain eating amoeba in the warm water, which will cause a very painful death if you dip your head in and are very unlucky.
After lunch, I drove for maybe five minutes to get to the Waiotapu mud pool, which were an extremely impressive sight. Basically a small lake of mud, dotted with boiling mud from under the surface and tiny mud volcanoes.
Waiotapu Mud Pool
The final stop, before the second major one, was Warm Lake Rotowhero which is another place where you could theoretically go swimming in hot water, but as I said before, wasn’t really feeling it. Instead what was impressive about it was the huge numbers of what I think were swallows swarming over it’s surface, probably at least thousands of them just filling the air, and then a peak of red in the background mountain hinting at my next adventure.
Warm Lake Rotowhero
Rainbow Mountain, or Maunga Kākaramea, is a volcano with quite spectacularly colourful cliffsides of red, yellow and white, from where it gets its name. My first port of call when arriving at the car park was a well deserved quick coffee break. Then I grabbed my backpack and started the climb up the mountain. After maybe a fifteen-minute walk through the quite dense forest, I reached the lookout over the again green crater lake, and the absolutely jaw-dropping sparkling cliffs, that were steaming. And on top of that the creak feeding the lake also had streamers of fog comming of it.
The Rainbow Mountain Crater Lake
The climb continued upwards, through the Mediterranean feeling shrubby greens and white soil. Quite soon came to another detour, this time up onto the porose cliffs, coming really quite close to the steaming vents. Actually had a bit of a similar feel to the Swedish-Finish archipelagos with low shrubs clinging to rugged bare rock, if those rocks were made of steaming sulphur.
After this point, the climb turned really quite muddy, and though it was really quite striking bright red, and clean white, clay, it was still slippery and the continuing walk to the top was quite long. But after a while walking in the tree cover, I emerged out into more short shrubland, which offered some really lovely views of the hilly volcanic landscape surrounding me. I even spotted the Waiotapu park from up here which was fun.
After a bit more than an hour of climbing through this very varied landscape of green shrubs and almost unreal bright whites and reds, I reached the top, and was treated to a panoramic view of the landscape surrounding me. This included Mount Tarawera in the distance, a great maw of a volcano which caused the 1886 eruption reshaping much of the Rotorua and Taupo area, the largest New Zealand eruption in modern time. I really wanted to visit it, but time and the price point (needs to be a guided tour to be allowed to visit) precluded me doing so, and so I was really happy to at least get to see it in the distance.
Mt Tarawera
After a quick fika at the top I headed back down towards my car, again amazed at the colours in the ground. A quick stop at a further up lookout, and at the lakeside lookout, and then down to my car for the onwards ride to Taupo where I would spend the night.
The surreal pathway of quite slippery white, red, and black, clay
The drive to Taupo was quite uneventful, and I was by this point getting quite tired. However, before wrapping up the day I first checked out the Aratiatia Rapids, and quickly learned that they were only really something special when they opened the dams, which they did at regular intervals, next one being 10 am tomorrow. So onwards on the last bit to Taupo where I stopped just before entering the city at the Huka Falls, New Zealand’s most volumouse waterfall. Though not that much of a fall height, the falls are still incredibly impressive with crazy amounts of water of the mighty Waikato river being pushed through a less than 10-metre wide gorge.
Huka Falls
And just as I was about to turn into Taupo, I was greated by a viewing spot and the most wonderful sunset over lake Taupo with the snowy peaks of Mounts Tongariro, Ngauruhoe and Ruapehu in the background. Truly a treat to end an incredibly intensive day
