What smells?
Trip Start
Sep 10, 2008
1
48
71
Trip End
Sep 03, 2009
Rotorua,
North Island,
New Zealand
Friday, March 20, 2009
Still, the smell is worth putting up with here. The Wai-O-Tapu park is a sight to behold. Once you get past all the steaming craters, most of which are called "Devil's Crater" or "Devil's ink pots" or "Hell's hole", (OK so those are slightly made up, but you get the idea!), things start to get more colourful. Yellow sulphur patches line the rooves of caves. Its all good as long as you don't think about the fact you are walking over huge underground craters that could collapse at anytime
Boiling Mud pool 5
. They have to check the integrity of the path every day. The Artist's Palette is one of the main attractions here. A large blue lake, lined with bright orange mud. It has to be seen to be believed. Steam rolls off the lake continuously and occasionally breaks the banks, giving us all a stinking steam bath. Really, you don't want to hang around here for too long. If that wasn't enough for you, they also have a pool that is a radioactive green colour. On the way to the park, we stopped to enjoy a boiling mud lake at our leisure. You could take a bath here, but it probably wouldn't be very good for you, and you probably wouldn't have much skin left afterwards. But hey, you can always go and visit the geyser down the road for a cold shower afterwards!
If you decide you do want a mud bath, its best to save your skin and make a visit to one of the Health Spas in the area, the most popular of which, is Hell's Gate. With it's own volcanic park, you can take a walk around, with less tourists to accompany you. You have to take their word on the claim that they have the Southern Hemisphere's only hot water waterfall, as you can't get anywhere near it to test it for yourself. I found the mud bath here slightly disappointing however. I had imagined it would be thick mud
Geyser 2
. Instead I found myself climbing into a bath of dirty-looking water. Apparently there is a bit of sediment in the bottom which you can dig up and smear over yourself. I pondered as to when the last time it was cleaned out - probably best not to think about it! The compulsory freezing cold shower after the mud bath, was not particularly pleasant, but the sulphur spa bath was. It felt quite tingly and floaty. Unfortunately, it also left my skin smelling faintly of sulphur for days after. The smell just didn't wash off, but at least it wasn't too strong!The final, must-not-be-missed feature of Rotorua, is of course the Maori evening and Hangi (meal). Our slightly eccentric driver who managed to fall over whilst getting into the bus, warned us that under no circumstances must we laugh or even smile during the opening ceremony as it is a sign of disrespect for their traditions. Trying not to laugh at someone with a painted face, wearing traditional Maori clothes, hopping backwards whilst screaming with his tongue hanging out is really quite a challenge. John Cleese himself would have been proud. After the ground in front of us was blessed, we were enter into the village. We walked round the set up, before being called into the meeting house for another performance, which was disappointingly short. And then it was time to eat.
And eat we did, we were greeted by a huge meal of meat, stuffing, vegetables and bread, all cooked in the traditional way. Stones are heated up on a fire, before being transfered to a hole in the ground. The food is placed on the stones and cloth is placed over the whole set up. The result is food that is very tender with a distinct, strong, earthy/smoky flavour. I found the potatoes a little strange, but couldn't get enough of the stuffing
Artist's pallette 2
. They even had free hot chocolate, although it wasn't the best I'd ever had! As the evening drew to a close, it was time for us to head home. Our driver made us sing on the way home, starting with the man who had been nominated as our groups chief earlier on in the evening. The man happened to be from Yorkshire, and so had to sing the Ilkley Moor song. Unfortunately, I was the only other Yorkshire-man on the bus and had to help him. Fortunately, a few other English people knew some of the words and joined in eventually. After systematically embarrassing at least one person of each nationality, the driver then broke into several songs himself. At one point he started singing "she'll be coming round the mountain" and drove round a roundabout 8 times in unison to the song. Cheesy as it was, it was pretty amusing at the time!
