Waimangu Volcanic Valley
Trip Start
Jul 12, 2006
1
102
230
Trip End
Jun 18, 2007
Rotorua,
New Zealand
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
But we made it to Waimangu, loaded up Lee's backpack with water, hats, sunscreen, raincoat, sarnies etc... and then headed into the valley. It's a one way walk through a huge valley that takes about 2 hours. It heads out to the lake where you get a little shuttle bus to bring you back
Champagne pool
. You can do a boat trip from the lake but it costs another $25 which made it too expensive for us, we settled for the walk.The actual walking track was lovely, surrounded by bush trees and flowers but every now and again a glimps towards some crater or steaming mess. The first highlight was the panorama view, from which you could see the huge lake with steam coming from the surface and the outline of the craters. It was like a view from a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, it would have been complete if a T-Rex or something had poked its head out the trees. As we made our way around the Southern Crater, Echo Crater and Frying Pan lake became closer and closer, steam danced on the surface of the lake then crept up the walls of the crater, mingling with the trees and plants, like little ghosts running away. As we got closer to the lake you could hear the bubbling and boiling of the lake edges, our map told us that the lake is acidic (pH3.5) so we decided against going for a dip ;) We followed the trail through hot water creek and the springs, at this point the water is 50oC and that's coming from Frying Pan lake so you can imagine how hot it is in there. The edge of the water was full of silica and various different coloured bacteria, you get so close to the hot water, it's amazing really. The steam coming of the stream was crazy in some points, really violent and hissing, sometimes it would mellow out and just for a second the steam looked normal, then it would turn into a steaming mess again
Champagne pool other end
. On our visit we were lucky enough to witness Inferno Crater lake in its full glory. As we walked up the steps to the crater on our left was a hot, hissing, steaming waterfall. This was the overflow channel for Inferno Crater Lake. Apparently it only overflows once in a while and we were lucky enough to catch it. The water coming down was hot, seriously hot, it was hissing and steaming like a car engine radiator that had exploded. The water coming down the channel is at near-boiling point. As we ascended towards the lake, the sight at the top of the platform was mad. You could barely see the lake for the steam coming off of it. It really was like walking into an inferno, or more like walking to the top of a witches cauldron, the steam was climbing up the walls from the surface of the lake from all angles. The depth of the lake is 30 meters when full, as it was today, and the temperature reaches 80oC - ouch!
As we came back down from the crater we took the extended route on the Mt Haszard hiking trail. It was quite steep but took you right up to the top of one of the craters so you could look back over the whole valley. The views were definitely worth the effort, even if we did have to stop once in a while - to take pictures of course ;)
As we came back down we saw black crater, fairy crater and then walked up to the Warbrick terraces, which were quite deserted but an amazing sight, more colourful silica terraces and more colourful waters
Coloured rocks
. The water was orange, yellow, blue, green, like a wonderful marbled effect, the water trickled down from a set of terraces, not very high but as you walked closer to them the water at the top was bright blue, completely different from the water at the bottom. The colours were so vivid. After this little detour we headed back onto the main route to pick up the nature walk down to the lakes edge. It was a pleasant enough walk but just not long enough really, we came to the end of the walk much too soon. The bus was there waiting for us and took us back to our starting point, we were treated to a few more steaming holes and hot pools on the way back. It was just a shame the boat trip was way too expensive for us to do as I'm sure that would have been great. We drove back to the hostel and it was roast lamb for dinner. We'd picked up a huge bit of lamb on the bone on special offer at the supermarket. In the oven it went along with the roast tats and even Yorkshire puddings. I think nearly everyone in the hostel commented on how nice is smelt and one oriental lady asked if I was a professional cook when making the yorkies. I did try and explain what Yorkshire puddings were (she thought I was making bread) but I don't think she got it really.
After we stuffed ourselves with roast we made a quick trip to the Pig and Whistle for a free bevvie.
