Getting into the (wet) spirit

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Sunny Intervals - feeling very warm

Started off the day with water. Went to Aratiatia Rapids, a few miles north of Taupo. It's an empty, narrow bouldery gorge nowadays, probably dues to the very large dam 100m upstream from the entrance. However, they open the gates and run the rapids at 10.00a.m. (and 12.00p.m.) daily, so walked to the downstream viewing point a few minutes beforehand and watched the rapids fill. Somebody does this for me and the 3 other people who were watching! It was extremely impressive as the rapids filled up - it took about 10 minutes form them to fill completely and another 10 minutes to empty when they shut the gates at 10.30. Went a little way downstream from the rapids then and went of a quick (over 50mph) trip with Rapids Jet, who run a jet boat from the Aratiatia Rapids downstream through a few other rapids. The pilot was the strong taciturn type, who just enjoys playing with his boat and let his beautiful assistant do all the talking to the tourists. The trip went through some big rapids at speed and had quite a few 360 turns - needed to change afterwards as several of the resulting waves were bigger than the boat. We went as far as seeing the main rapids from immediately below with the mid-day water in - still very impressive. There were several interesting looking sedimentary and volcanic (mixed exposures) but passing them at 50mph from 6 inches away is not conducive to reflective geology.

Had lunch then and headed for a walk around Craters of the Moo, a geothermal area near the rapids. This only came into being in the late 1950's, after the local geothermal power plant was built and the underground water pressures altered. It's still changing and growing. It's no Yellowstone - there aren't any actual geysers or anything - but there are some good hot pools and mudpots - quite interesting to see how such an area can evolve. I'll try and go to a bigger thermal area tomorrow and there should be more at Rotorua next week.

Headed back into town and arranged some rafting for Saturday, when it shoul dbe getting nice and sunny. Spent the remainder of the afternoon on the lake shore, reading and a quick swim - the lake is remarkably cold away from shore (but nothing like as cold as Bassenthwaite at Scout Camp).

I had dinner at a cafe by the lake shore and then went to the local cinema to see Beowulf, which has at last arrived in New Zealand. Although the film's only just been released here and it's not long until CHristmas, the place was almost empty.

Damn - left the reading glasses in the cafe - hope they've found them and have them for me tomorrow.

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