North Island New Zealand Part 2: Getting Geothermally Active in NZ

Oceania » New Zealand » North Island
May 18th 2010

Published: June 14th 2010

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LouiseandJonty

Cathedral Cove

Crystal clear turquoise blue water

The problem with NZ is that, with so much to see, where do you invest your time? After the first week, although we'd seen alot, we didn't really feel that we'd done all that much. Then Louise found a book* in our Spaceship and the North Island adventures really took off!

So off we went across country towards the Coromandel and Karangahake Gorge where you can check out the old gold mines, the gorge, the river, forests, and take a walk through a 150 metre long tunnel carved through the rock face (good torch required - ours were rubbish and we tripped and staggered all the way through it laughing at each other).

Then onto the east coast and the geothermal action begins. Hot Water beach where hot water bubbles up through the sand at low tide and you can dig your own spa pool! Funny how ordinarily people stay as far away from each other as possible on the beach but not here, everyone's pitched in together sharing hot water and advice on how to get it! You get about an hour either side of low tide before the tide comes back in and fills your little tub

Cathedral Cove Coastline

with freezing ocean water!

Then inland to Rotorua (or Roto Vegas as the locals refer to it) where sulphur steam clouds abound as geothermally active NZ goes mad! You can even smell it in the air and it aint good! You can pay alot to visit the sights but we found plenty of free places to enjoy the naturally heated water and see the action. On one beautifully clear sunny day without a breath of wind in the air we bathed under the hot waterfalls at Kerosene Creek, giggled our heads off at mud burping Mud Pool, and soaked ourselves silly at the hot pools just beside Wai O Tapu park (local knowledge required!)

We caught up with friends in Papamo and then New Plymouth** before heading to Wellington. There we visited the Te Papa museum where you can easily lose a couple of days which was good because the rain was non stop! The museum is totally interactive and, ok, maybe a lot of that stuff was supposed to be for kids but we loved it too! Then ready to continue on our adventures we caught the Inter Islander ferry to the South Island.

So in

Mount Doom!

Frodo and Sam could've taken this road to Mt Ruapehu in Tongariro National park like we did. Much easier.

total we spent around 3 and a half weeks in the North Island, longer than we were advised to with only 6 weeks here in total but ,we were having such a great time we had to drag ourselves away!

*Don't do the North Island without 'NZ Frenzy' by Scott Cook, it's great!

** Just to say a great big thank you to John and Angie, Glen and Monique, for putting us up in New Zealand. We had a such a good time seeing you guys, NZ hospitality at it's best!

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