Wai-o-Tapu and Waimangu

 Wednesday, February 19

We woke up this morning and watched live on our outdoor house camera as our awesome neighbour cleared our not-so-small driveway for Frankie's parents.  Wow, that's a lot of snow!  

So apparently a "boutique" hotel means that you choose one of five $30 items for breakfast along with a few pastries.  Thank goodness our breakfast was included!

If the title of this blog is foreign (ha ha), Wai-o-Tapu and Waimangu are the names of two geothermal parks in the area.

We started in the morning with a half hour drive to Wai-o-Tapu.  This park is famous for their Lady Knox Geyser which erupts like clockwork everyday at 10:15 am.  It is a bit controversial because the eruption is actually "triggered" by adding soap powder which disrupts the natural chemical balance.  Is it a good thing to be adding soap into the environment?  Many people don't think so, yet the tourists keep coming.  

imagecredit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_Knox_Geyser#/media/File:Lady_Knox_Geyser.jpg

We've seen geysers before, and this one seems a bit forced, so we skipped the crowds and took to the trails instead. 

There are 3 walks totaling about 3 to 4 km.  Notice the arrows to indicate which direction you should walk.

imagecredit: https://www.visualitineraries.com/img/locations/12741.jpg

The area is full of  boiling mud, collapsed craters, steaming fissures, and lakes that are strikingly coloured by minerals. There are 12 craters.  Each is 5 to 15 meters across and up to 20 meters deep.  The colours around the craters are caused by minerals that are oxidized when they come into contact with the atmosphere of the earth.

This pool of water is really a collapsed crater, and is called Devil's Bath.  The water is actually clear, but saturated with sulphur and other minerals that make it appear green.  The pool is highly acidic.  

At the far end of the trail is Lake Ngakoro.  This one is green because of algae blooms from high temperatures. 

The waterfall here is called Puna o Ngakoro and is actually a hot water waterfall.  There are only a few in the world.

This is the Champagne Pool:

Our favourite came right at the end.  This is Roto Karikitea, a crater that is filled with excess water from the Champagne Pool:

The drive to our second park, Waimangu, took 10 minutes, and we found lunch at a small cafe there.

Waimangu is called the world's youngest geothermal area.  It is the only such area created within written history.  It was made during a volcanic eruption in 1886, and has been unaltered by humans since then, hallelujah!

Unfortunately, the eruption destroyed the area's pink and white terraces.  This is a re-creation of what they looked like:

imagecredit: https://www.waimangu.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/pink-terraces-image.jpg

The Waimangu Geyser was active for 4 years between 1900 and 1904 and was the world's largest geyser at the time, spewing up mud almost 500 meters high.  Wow!

imagecredit: https://www.waimangu.co.nz/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/waimangu-geyser-1900-to-1904-768x432.jpg

Unfortunately, 4 tourists were killed in 1903 when they were standing in area they had been told was dangerous and the Waimangu Geyser suddenly erupted.  The white cross still remains there:

In Waimangu, we had booked a "Volcanic Valley Walk and Boat Cruise".  It started with a 3 hour self-guided walk through geothermal areas.  We found this park to be far less commercialized and it had much denser vegetation.  Plus we went long stretches without seeing another soul.  They gave us a handout with 32 geothermal features along the way.  Here are some of the places we saw.

Our favourite  feature was Inferno Crater Lake.  Temperatures reach 80C, and the water is highly acidic at 2.8.  What a beautiful colour!

We skipped doing the Mt Haszard Hiking Trail which was described as steep and rough.  With a name like that???  Maybe in our younger days....

The walk ends with a 45 minute boat cruise on Lake Rotomahana to see more of the area.  This lake is the youngest of New Zealand's naturally formed lakes.  This large lake was formed during the 1886 eruption that cracked open the earth and sent debris 11 kms into the air.  Seven villages were destroyed.  Eventually, the crater filled with water to form this lake.

The boat runs every hour, and the boat ahead of us had about a dozen passengers.  But we were the only ones aboard when we took it!  So we had our very own VIP tour of the lake.

He took us to a spot were a geyser (natural!) erupts every 10 minutes or so.

We also saw some blue-green algae along the rocks that is now yellow because it has been sunburned:

A "shuttle" (really old bus) took us back to the park entrance and we got back to our hotel AGAIN ten minutes before free parking began.  So again we sat with the car to make sure we didn't get a ticket.

We found very good gluten free pizza to share for dinner: