I didn’t need to see any jets of steam catapulting into the air or hear the bubbles of mud popping nearby to know that I had arrived at The Wai-O-Tapu (Sacred Waters) Thermal Wonderland. What gave it away far before these visual cues was the deepening sulphur smell of geothermal gloriousness, that rotten egg odor that is everywhere in Rotorua but even more intense as I stood within the thermal park.
The smell of eggs was a small price to pay for a trip to The Wai-O-Tapu, a scenic reserve within the Taupo Volcanic Zone that is administered by New Zealand’s Department of Conservation. Covering 18km (6.94mi) squared, with Maungakaramea (Rainbow Mountain) marking the reserve’s northern tip, Wai-O-Tapu is chock full of geological wonders. I was thankful for my Viator Guide on this Rotorua Eco Thermal tour because the experience of walking through the reserve was sufficiently surreal; without his continued narrative, I would have certainly drifted off into a crater somewhere. While I have travelled to many far-flung places, nothing prepared me for the feeling that I was on another planet—one where the pools were yellow and the lakes were rimmed in ochre.
Clik here to view.
Inside the Wai-O-Tapu reserve
Clik here to view.
Reflective pool of colloidal sulphur and ferrous salts at Wai-O-Tapu
The Eco Thermal tour might last an entire day but in reality tourists can only access a small part of this enormous volcanic area, one which dates back 160,000 years and has continued its under-the-soil movements with the occasional catastrophic eruption above the earth’s crust. The reserve is actually located in an even older echo of a volcano, the Reporoa caldera, which they believe was formed some 230,000 years ago in a massive volcanic explosion that changed the face of the area entirely.
That eruption was not the only one to change this tempestuous region. In 1886, Mount Tarawera exploded, destroying what was then a hugely popular tourist area at its base called the Pink and White terraces. Also destroyed was Lake Rotomahana, replaced by a long series of craters and pools of mud, similar to what I saw at the Wai-O-Tapu reserve. In the years since, the lake has slowly crept back to life, filling with water that now sits at 30 meters (98 feet) higher than before.
The tour started with a visit to the mud pools, a fun mass of sputtering, spluttering sounds. From there, the colors shifted as I wandered into the heart of the reserve and its collapsed craters filled with fluorescent yellow sulphur and its huge pools of blue and green, mixing with rusty iron.
Clik here to view.
The group wandering through Wai-O-Tapu
Clik here to view.
The Artists Palette, one of my favorite sights. At the left of the Palette is a geyser from which steam rises and water can erupt up to 1 meter (3.2 feet) high
Clik here to view.
The Devil’s Bath, a rugged-edged crater with a crazy natural color, which results from the Champagne Pool’s runoff mixed with sulphur and ferrous salts
I was particularly excited to see the Champagne Pool, the iconic Rotorua image that enticed me to the city in the first place. When a friend suggested I visit, I Googled the name and the first photo that came up sold me. It was of a huge pool formed 700 years ago by a hydrothermal eruption. Behold!
Clik here to view.
Champagne Pool
The Champagne Pool is the largest in the network of gurgling activity, and very active. At 74C (165.2F) degrees, it is home to gold, silver, mercury, sulphur, arsenic, thallium, antimony, and more—all of which are deposited over and over onto the edge of the pool, creating sinter ledges around it. I had to run to catch up with the group, as I did not want to leave its side.
Clik here to view.
Close up of the mineral deposits at the Champagne Pool
The trip to Wai-O-Tapu would not have been complete without a stop at Lady Knox Geyser with its peculiar routine of tourists waiting, cameras in hand, for the water to flow. While geysers around the world—Old Faithful in Yellowstone, and geysers in Geyser, Iceland—erupt at vague intervals, Lady Knox does so at precisely 10:15am, daily. How? By being persuaded on the dot with the aid of soap. When the soap is poured into the vent of the geyser, it triggers an eruption—something that was discovered accidentally by prisoners in 1901. They were washing their clothes in an “open prison” using the spring water, and one of them must have dumped the appropriate amount of soap to trigger an eruption. I can’t imagine the surprise.
While the sight of many tourists waiting for an eruption is vastly different from the peaceful wanders through Wai-O-Tapu, I did appreciate that science found a way—or should I say some prisoners did—to harness this geyser into promptness.
Clik here to view.
Lady Knox beginning to erupt
Regardless of the crowds, Viator ensured that I ended my tour of the reserve with the most peaceful of scenes as we were whisked from the simmering thermal insanity of Wai-O-Tapu to the clear lakes of Tikitapu and Rotokakhi. New Zealand has 200 species of ferns and 40% of them are found nowhere else in the world. Standing at the edge of the lake in silence and staring at the bright green giant ferns that lined it, I couldn’t help but think of how this entire day was so fundamentally different than anything else I had seen in my months in New Zealand. Sometimes, after you’ve jumped out of planes and bungeed off of bridges, it takes Mother Nature to truly render you speechless.
Clik here to view.
The eco-thermals of Rotorua
-Contributed by Jodi Ettenberg
Exploring the Eco-Thermal Landscapes of Rotorua from Auckland & North Island Things to Do