This is the country’s most colourful and diverse geothermal area and home to the reliable Lady Knox Geyser. We arrived at the centre in time for the geyser to shoot water and steam up to 21m into the air.
The fields and rivers leading up to this attraction look like normal hedge lined paddocks, except for the jets of steam coming out of them! Truly bizarre.
The Thermal Wonderland covers 18 sq.km and is literally covered with collapsed craters, cold and boiling pools of mud, water and steaming fumaroles. The area is associated with volcanic activity dating back about 160,000 years and is located right on the edge of the largest volcanic caldera (depression) within the active Taupo Volcanic Zone. Check out www.waiotapu.co.nz for some great pics and information.
We were amazed by the vibrant colours that are present in the pools and on the rocks, these are all natural and are due to different mineral elements. There were bright yellows, greens, oranges, Reds and blacks, just to name a few. It was like someone had spilled a pot of paint on the floor in some places.
There were ‘no smoking’ signs everywhere as the surrounding manuka scrub vegetation, which is tolerant of the gases in this area, is highly flammable as are some of the minerals.
The smell was quite reminiscent of Avonmouth or Port Talbot on a bad day!, due to the hydrogen Sulphide. We have found New Zealand’s very own Wiffy hot spot!
Everywhere you looked there were pits of bubbling mud or steaming and hissing water. There was a huge pool in the middle called the Champagne Pool,
measuring 65m in diameter and 62m deep. Its surface temperature is 74degrees C and there are carbon dioxide bubbles all over the surface. There are minerals deposited around the edge of the pool which are gold, silver, mercury, sulphur, arsenic, all combining to give the ledge an amazing colour. Excess water from this pool goes into the ‘Devil’s Bath’ a large ruggedly-edged crater with water the colour of pistachio nuts, almost florescent green. This colour is the result of excess water from the Champagne pool mixing with sulphur and ferrous salts. We couldn’t believe it was a natural colour it was so intense.We saw some lovely patterns in the rock where the deposits of the minerals had made lace-like patterns. We were over 5 hours at this attraction, around every corner was another amazing sight.
We were fascinated with this place, bringing home to us that just beneath our feet is a molten, moving core which is forever moving and adjusting. It gives you a good insight into how the Earth was formed and is still being formed today.
We stopped by the Huka falls on our way back. This is where the Waikato River is channelled through a narrow rock chute before hurtling over an 11m bluff to a foaming couldron below. The water is so clear it is a lovely shade of blue, Tracy thinks it looks like
washing powder. Further on, down stream, the river forms the Aratiatia Rapids. Floodgates to the dam above the rapids are opened several times a day to allow kayaking and jet-boating. We were in time to watch the floodgates open and saw the trickling stream become a torrent of water covering the big boulders on the river bed.We had a beer on Taupo lakeside in the evening sunshine, and then enjoyed a meal watching the sun set over the lake and surrounding mountains.
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