Day 17 - Rotorua

Happy New Year. Woke up on the first day of the new year and pulled back the curtains to see what the day would be like. There was blue sky showing through the scattered clouds, so it looked like it was going to be a good day. Mazz then opened the sliding door and stepped outside to see how warm it was. - Phew!, the overpowering smell of Rotorua came wafting into the room, a sulphorous, rotten egg kind of smell. The smell is pretty overpowering at first, but after a while you get used to it and hardly notice it any more.

After breakfast, first stop of the day was "Wai-O-Tapu"(Wai-O-Tapu means "Sacred Waters") , a geothermal scenic reserve that is full of collapsed craters, geysers and boiling mud pools. We arrived just in time to see the Lady Knox geyser errupt. When coldwater mixes with with superheated steam caused by volcanic activity, it causes the geyser to errupt in a spectacular water and steam explosion. Normally this would happen every 2-3 days, but at 10:15 everyday the park triggers an erruption of the geyser. The Lady Knox geyser erruption lasted for about 2 minutes and reached a height of apout 8 meters. After the geyser, we then followed the walking track through the park, a trail of about 3km that took about an hour an a half. Along the way we saw plenty of bubbling mud pools, and steaming lakes of mutiple colours.

 Some of the minerals in the earth react with the hot water and steam to form colours. Last stop was a large Mud pool which was located outside of the park. The mud pool was about 30 metres in Diameter, and full of bubbles, steam and small eruption all accompanied by the same "interesting" sulphurous smell!.

After Wai-O-Tapu we headed back into Rotorua and made our way to a Redwood forest, just outside of town. There are many walking tracks through the forest, ranging from 30 minutes to 8 hours. We decided to take one of the shorter trails and headed off. The trees are Californian Redwoods, and were planted in 1901. They can grow to a height over 100m. The wood is not especially good however, as the trees grow so quickly that they wood is soft. The walk was especially interesting because the forest canopy is quite high, and even the ferns are high, having to reach up to get any light. Down on the forest floor however, it is quite open and easy to walk though.

Following the Redwoods, we headed back into town to a park famous for its thermal activity. In the park there were about 20 small pools, all fenced off and all bubbling and steaming away. There was a sign informing everyone to not touch the touch the water as it is 100 deg C, so we thought we had better leave them alone. Next stop we went back into town and wandered amongst the shops, but being New Years day most of the shops were closed, so we decided to head back to the Motel