All Summer Long

Rotorua wins the award for most interesting landscape on our journey so far. Sitting in the footprint of a volcano, we were surrounded by steaming rock, choking for several days on the smell of sulphur escaping from the ground.

While we could see geysers and steam along the walkways in the immediate parks, the best showcase of geothermal activity was at the Waiotapu thermal wonderland: a mesmerising tour of caverns, craters and sulphuric pools, over-saturated in garish colour, collapsed and steaming. It looked like everything had been treated with technicolor as the water shone in patches of luminous yellow and toxic green next to the remains of burnt wood, and green moss grew in contrast to the orange-coated trees where the minerals had settled along its branches. The gurgling mud pools looked hungry as well. One of the sections of water was fittingly named the Artist’s Palette, and this is a good way to visualise the park.

The tour repeatedly takes you to within an inch of your life, as you’re only ever a few feet away from disintegrating in the devil’s bath. I cringed as a child dipped his finger into a stream near the Champagne Pool, but thankfully the water left his hand intact. The only part that was a bit naff was when they artificially erupted Lady Knox with a bag of soap. That got a big thumbs down from us and thankfully we got to witness a true geyser erupt later on that day.

After the geothermal playground, we visited two lakes that appear blue and green from a bird’s eye view due to the minerals on their bottoms. The green lake is sacred, so it is forbidden to circle its perimeter or dip your toes in, but the blue lake is walkable in a couple of hours and would have made a great day out in itself if we had the time.

In the afternoon, we went to a traditional Maori village called Whakarewarewa (good luck reading that), which is inhabited by around 50 members of the tribe who are bound by ancestral blood or marriage. Extended members of the family are invited to return to the village, use its baths and cooking facilities and sleep temporarily in the meeting house, and we tourists were invited to have a mooch around.

Entirely self-sufficient, they fund themselves on tourism, giving walk-around tours of the village as well as a cultural performance each day, both of which we had the pleasure of enjoying. Six or Seven members of the tribe played traditional instruments on stage and sang in harmony, before bulging their eyes and tongues for the intimidating Haka.

It was cool to watch them steam corn over sulphuric baths and cook food below ground. They also have the biggest geyser in the southern hemisphere, which we saw blow from a distance. They explained how to read into Maori carvings, and that has been useful for looking at totems in the city museums.

We ended our stay at a natural spa in the mountains where two rivers meet (hot & cold) as we were softened in the calcites and sulphur of the 40 degree water. We bathed for two hours with the locals and watched the sun set in the valley.