About 20 mins outside of where we stayed in Rotorua last night is Wai-O-Tapu, home of a particular geyser that apparently goes off at 10.15 every day, and this same park has some great thermal lakes / mud pools / smells, so how could we resist making fart gags all day long?
Apparently this geyser, the Lady Knox, was actually first discovered by convicts clearing scrubland around the area, when they went to wash their clothes in the warm spring. The soap caused the density of a large underground lake of cold water to change, allowing a vast reserve of warm water underneath to force its way to the surface. A jet of water went skyward, and the convicts ran for their lives!
They do the same again today artificially, but the effect is still the same…
that is to say, both Suz and I get soaked in eggy smelling water!
The rest of the park was brilliant too, with loads of weird pools of thermal water, boiling mud and oddities of geology. The champagne pool is amazing, 74 degrees C at the surface, and it’s edges brightly coloured arsenic ridges…
and the well named ‘Devils Bath’, where this sulphurous water mixes with minerals to form this…
I promise you, it really is that colour!
Next up – Lake Taupo!
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