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Published: June 22nd 2005
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I'd been warned that you smell Rotorua before you even get off the bus and its true.. the rotten egg smell of hydrogen sulphide wafts through the air con of the bus and hits you on the way into town. Strangely I quickly stopped noticing it... a sign that I should stay here or that I spent too many years in a lab working with smelly chemicals (or lab partners...) ??!!!
I really liked Rotorua and could have spent longer here than I did just wondering around the different volcanic and geothermal areas in the region. Unfortunately you really need a car to get to them otherwise using the tourist buses quickly becomes quite expensive.
My first stop was Wai-O-Tapu, a geothermal park about 30km from Rotorua. At the edge of the park are mud pools, but with a surface temperature @ 50degrees (apparently getting up to over 100 a few meters down) these aren't the type that you would want to use as a beauty treatment! Next stop was Lady Knox Geyser - the fact that its induced to perform each day with the help of some soap flakes kind of removed the impressive factor and I much
preferred others that I saw which occured naturally. The Wai-O-Tapu park itself was very impressive though... well for those of us that like looking at steaming vents, colored rocks and bubbling pools anyway! We only had an hour here but I probably could have spent most of the day here. Some of the highlights were the Champange Pool, Artists Palette and the bright green Devils Bath. The colours are all due to different mineral elements present in the water so I had much fun trying to remember back to my A level chemistry all those years ago.....the one that had me stumped for a while was antimony.. anyway its the one that gives the edge of the Champange pool its burnt ornage colour....
The second stop of the day was the Waimangu Volcanic Valley. Compared to the crowds at Wai-O-Tapu this was empty, I think I only saw 3 people on the two hour walk through the valley. The individual features were on a smaller scale than at Wai-O-Tapu but I preferred it - apart from the lack of people, one minute you're walking through lush green vegetation then you turn the corner to find a beautiful powder blue
lake, geysers and enough boiling pools and coloured rocks/algae to have me taking far too many photo's!! I'll spare most of you by not posting them all to this web site though ;0)
My second day in Rotorua started a bit later than planned thanks to a few too many beers the night before - well, it was someones birthday and it would have been rude not to go along ;0) In the afternoon I visited the Te Puia Thermal Village on the egde of town. Apart from more geysers, mud pools and steaming rocks the Village also houses a Maori Carving school which takes on students for a three year course to ensure that these traditional skills aren't lost. Women aren't allowed to carve - instead you can see how they weave baskets, flowers and almost anything else you might want out of flax.
Time to move on again... this time to heading north to Whakatane and White Island...
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Carol
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Thermal Reserves
Excellent pictures and your report help us decide which reserve to see as we had to choose between the 2!