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Published: March 31st 2005
Orakei Korako - the silica terrace
And me posing for the camera, it became a game not to simply stand but find poses all the time...After the short prologue for the thermal area that we had in "craters of the moon", we continued on Wednesday to some more REAL stuff - smelly and beautiful nature. We left Taupo in the morning to go to a place called "Orakei Korako". The place is full of these thermal things - one geyser that didn't come out for us... but there were amazing silica terraces, which are terraces in beautiful colors, white, yellow, red, and steam coming from the ground everywhere. One area there is called "the artist's palette" because the ground is so colorful. There are also mud pools with boiling mud and also boiling water pools - amazing.
From there we continued north towards the "capital city of the sulphur smell" - Rotorua. On the way we stopped for a short walk in "Rainbow mountain" - named that way because the ground is so colorful. Unfortunately, 20 minutes after we started to walk, heavy rain started... and we were only wearing T-shirts and no rain coats. We ran back to the car and arrived there so wet as if we bathed in full clothes :-) But at least we got lucky then - the rain stopped the
minute we got to the car so we could dry and change (first time I fully change my clothes 20 meters from the highway :-) :-)
We arrived to Rotorua too late to see much, but we had a cool picnic right in the middle of the elegant "Government Gardens" - we made tea with our portable stove and had some of my tasty chocolate cake. We felt that we became real backpackers, preparing the tea and not going to a cafe, but it felt so much more fun.
At night we stayed with another great HIT family - they invited us to join dinner and we had a real fun evening.
On Thursday we went to a place called "Tu Puia" or the "Maori arts and crafts center". It's a strange package deal - some Maori culture and some nature, but all in all it was great. We started in a tour of the Maori culture part and learned a bit about them, and also saw a concert of Maori music and dances. Then we went to the Kiwi house and for the first time saw a real Kiwi - these birds are nocturnal and very hard to
see in nature, so I was glad to finally see the national bird. It's really cute... And then there is the thermal area of the center, called "Te Whakarewarewa" or "Waka" in short, with the highlight being the geysers that come out pretty often so you always have a chance to see them. It was the first time I saw a geyser in my life and I must tell you: (you'd be surprised to hear) It's amazing! (Isn't my vocabulary too small for this amazing country?). It's like a fountain coming out directly from earth. It was beautiful. Of course, they also have mud pools and boiling water pools, but we got used to that already.
Then there is Rotorua's museum that was mostly boring except for a cool movie about the big erruption of the Mt Tarawera volcano, including moving seats so you feel what it was like.
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