The smell of rotten eggs

From Taupo it was a quick hour long trip to Rotorua, the geo-thermal and cultural center of NZ...and finally found what I was looking for. Looking back on it, Rotorua has been one of, if not my favorite, stop in NZ. It was amazing and I had an amazing time there.

The town sits directly on top of the "Ring of Fire" (the volcanic circle that goes completely around the pacific....including the California faults, the Andes in South America, etc.) and is very active thermally. If you know anything about hot springs, etc. you know that they are heated from the center of the earth, more specifically by hydrogen sulphide. Unfortunately sulfur smells like rotten eggs. So every now and then you walk around town and get an awful wiff of air, but you also walk around town and can see the ground literally steaming in certain places.

I spent my first day there walking around the town thermal park to look at these bubbling pools and steaming grounds. It was cool but was nothing compared to what was to come at Wai O Tapu, the "Thermal Wonderland". It's about 20km out of town and one of the largest thermally active areas in the country. It is filled with craters, geysers, and sinters (flat grounds next to craters/geysers/etc.) formed from minerals/elements deep within the earth, meaning they are brightly colored from what we typically see. One of the overlooks there is called the "Artists Palette" because it is a myriad of colors ranging from white, red, blue, green and all shades in between. The first stop there was to the Lady Know Geyser to watch its eruption. It was kind of lame because it is set off by a person (it would be unsafe otherwise) but it shot steaming water about 20 feet into the air...hooray!! From there we went to the boiling mud pools, which were awesome. Mud that is bubbling might not sound too appealing but the sound it makes (like a witches cauldron) and the shapes that the mud takes after it "pops" were amazing to see. You then follow a 2 mile walk way around the park to various colorful sites to and of course smells.

Highlights were the Champagne Pool and Devil's Basin. The Champagne blue is brilliantly bright blue pool with reddish sides (the color of bright rust). The pool is constantly steaming because it is about 180 degrees on the surface. The pool goes extremely deep into the ground, hence the reason for its heat. The shades of color there are breathtaking, and the overflow from the pool create most of the park, including the silica sinters that get covered in bright green moss. The Devil's Basin looked more like kool-aid than actual water. It is a former crater filled with neon green water....it was seriously out of this world and didn't smell too bad which was great.

After Wai O Tapu I went to the "world's newest thermal" area, Waimangu which was formed from an eruption in 1886. The park was filled with many craters, which frankly looked like deep valleys in the forest, and the largest hot spring in the world, which of course was steaming and bubbling everywhere. Most of it was not as visually impressive as Wai O Tapu except for the Inferno Crater, the highlight of the park. Like the Devil's Basin it too was a brilliant shade of color, except this time it was bright blue with white side walls. It was almost a carolina blue color in shade and was definitely the bluest water I had ever seen. I wanted to take a dip, but I'd rather not be boiled, the pool average temperature is between 120-180 degrees.

These thermal areas were far different than what I expected and anything that I'd seen so far which made them all the better for me to visit.

And I still had the Black Water Rafting to look forward to.