Today we started the morning with the short drive back to Wai-O-Tapu from our campground. This site is famous because of the high concentration of geothermal activity in a relatively small area.

We made it just in time to watch them induce the geyser to do it’s morning show; shooting hot water about 2m into the air. They dump soap into it to lower the surface tension of the water so it’ll perform on command; makes for good tourism, although I wouldn’t classify it as a natural wonder.

So after this we went to the park proper, and did the several kilometer long walk around the park. There were some people around, but no where near the crowds you’d see at a US national park, which was wonderful. Plus, most of them are speaking other languages, so are easy to tune out 🙂

I (Mel) have never been to a volcanic/geothermal area before, and Eli’s only been to volcanic areas, so this was all new stuff for us, and was really amazing. It didn’t smell too bad, so we could take our time and enjoy the sights. Everything was so many colors; orange from antimony, yellow from sulfur (they spell it sulphur here), red/brown from iron oxides, black from carbon, etc. There were geysers, mud pools, hot springs, thermal pools, geothermal lakes, craters… all manner of new things to see. They had great pathways that took you right next to all these things.  We took about a zillion pictures (or rather, I did since Eli was feeling lousy).  Here are just a few.  We also took some great videos of bubbling mud, but they’re too big to upload for now.  We have a 1GB cap for the entire time we’re here, so I’m trying to ration my picture/video uploads (hard job!).

You can’t quite tell, but the lake is green, teal, and yellow in different patches. I can’t remember the name right now (10 minutes to catch the ferry!), but it’s got a bunch of thermal springs and upwelling-type things into it that bring in the colored minerals.

The color doesn’t show up well on our netbook, but this lake is NEON yellow.  Bright, almost blindingly yellow from all the sulfur in it. It was right next to these great yellow sulfur caves.

This is a lame picture of boiling mud. These pits are so cool; huge pits of mud with air bubbling up all through them, making them look like they’re boiling with bits of super-hot mud shooting everywhere. I took some good videos of it that we’ll upload later.

We drove south all the way to Wellington after this, so we could get really good sleep in before catching the ferry. Along the way, we drove past some snow covered mountains, which I think are near Tongariro, where we are going to hike on our way back north.