This was one of the coolest places (for me) that we've been in New Zealand so far. On the way back from Lake Taupo we wanted to stop at some hot springs, as we weren't overly impressed with the ones at the Taupo holiday park we stayed at. On the way was a neat sounding free hot pool called "Butchers Pool" which was a little disappointing once we found it. I envisioned a natural pool area in a free flowing stream, but we found a wooden rectangle area covered in foam with a few guys sitting around in it. We decided it wasn't our cup of tea and we'd move on to Waikite Valley where the pool cost money but was hopefully a better experience. It was!
Sadly I thought I took a picture of Butchers Pool, but I did not. :(
Anyways, on to Waikite! When we were almost there we took a wrong turn (we immediately knew it was wrong, but decided to investigate anyways) into the "Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland" attraction. We'll definitely be returning here again, but on the way out of the parking lot we noticed a sign for "Mud Pools". We'd seen some mud pools earlier in the day at Craters of the Moon, but they were hard to see (you could hear some bubbling, but water levels were low and the pools were dryish). So anyways, we turned in to the mud pools here and were pleasantly surprised with the overwhelming awesomeness!
The remains of a bigger mud explosion we missed!
Bloop!
Blop!
Evidence of mud explosions everywhere. Almost looked black and white!
Here's a video I took. :D
Onward we went to Waikite once again. We got there and the place looked pretty nice, lots of steam rising from the valley floor below near where we parked:
Natural Steam!
We knew we were in for a treat!
We went in and had a really enjoyable hour and a half reading in some nice water. There were kids, but they were well behaved, not like the ones I encountered in Taupo and a bunch of activities along the way home (running into me, stepping on m foot to get in front of me to find Bees at Honey Hive, etc. lol)... Anyways, just as we were about to leave I remember I saw a sign pointing to an Eco-Trail you could walk down. Worth checking out, I figured! Off we went. WOW. The natural stream was super cool to see. Near boiling water all the way, which they gently cool by running it thinnly along the surface exposing it to air for a while before it drops into the hot pools we were just enjoying. At the top of the stream is the source, where 40-50L of 99.6 degree (celcius) water boils up from the earth below. Way too cool to see. I knew these existed in theory but had never seen one so obvious and amazing. Definitely made the whole experience!
The water is cooled down as it moves from stream to pool.
Even late in the cooling stage it's still pretty hot.
Reading in the hot pool! My favourite activities combined.
Jax takes a break from reading. Wonderfully clear water.
Nice little Gazebo for when it rains and you still want to hot pool with a dry head.
Steamy water. Looks so out of place in nature.
Who knew that part of NZ used to be part of South America? I did not. Plate tectonics knowledge fail.
These calcium formations may look like gross foam, but they are awesome minerals instead.
Even moss is cooler in NZ.
The Source! So hot! Don't want to jump in here, unless you're a Targaryen maybe..
Ah! It's so hot!
Wondrous calcium deposits by the source.
More information about the chemical composition of the source water. And a reminder that you should keep out of the steaming bubbling water. Yep.
The main reason for this stop was because I wanted honey ice cream but the Honey Hive turned out to be a pretty cool place. The have a huge store full of honey products, including lots of different kinds of honey that you can sample. Including a super magic honey called manuka honey that has antibacterial properties. I think it's a little overhyped, but we bought a small jar for fun :)
We also sampled some mead (aka honey wine) and bought a bottle to share with our upcoming guests! The store sold a couple types of honey-related beer so we got those to try too. And the honey ice cream was delicious! Basically vanilla with nice hints of honey taste.
We're bees!
Yum!
Honey goodness
There was a couple live bee colonys at the store (with exits to the outdoors for the bees) which was cool to see. Though a bit creepy...I know bees are good but they still look a bit scary all milling about under the glass.
Crazy bee colony
Oldschool bee suit and centrifuge for removing honey without damaging the comb.
One our way from the Honey Hive we randomly stopped at Puzzle World, a cute little attraction run by a very friendly woman. They had lots of puzzles (jigsaws and logic-type) for sale and for playing in the cafe. Would have been a fun place to have lunch if we hadn't already eaten! Scott bought a "get the rings apart" type puzzle that was level 6/6 on the hardness scale. Wonder how long it will take him to solve it :)
There's a bunch of neat geothermal walks around Taupo, but we feel we might do some of the more expensive ones with friends and family that are coming to visit in the next couple weeks, so we decided to do the cheapest one, "Craters of the Moon" (note: this is in New Zealand, not on the moon, sadly).
It was surprisingly cool! Steam erupted from seemingly nothing in the ground all over the 45 minute walk. Steam here, steam there, steam everywhere! A slight sulphur smell permeated the whole park as well.
For me the most interesting thing about the park came from Wikipedia. It used to be the site of a number of different geysers, which spit out tons of hot water all the time. In the 1950s the Wairakei Power Station was built, which uses geothermal energy to generate electricity, and a byproduct of the construction of the plant was the elimination of the geysers at the nearby (now) Craters of the Moon park. According to Wikipedia, the power plant "reduced the pressure in the hot water systems below the earth surface. Since then much of the geothermal activity in the region has dramatically changed, as did the geothermal activity at Craters of the Moon. The geysers at Wairakei Geyser Valley totally disappeared, but the heat output at Craters of the Moon increased. A lot of hydrothermal eruptions occurred, which formed the craters." and also notes that while pressure decreased in the system, the overall energy increased for a while with the added heat. In 1950 the energy output in the area was measured at 50 megawatts, and as of 1964 it had hit 420MW, and has come down to 200 megawatts now (as of 2000, anyways).
Overall the place was a neat experience and definitely had an unearthly feel!
Super duper cool crater panorama. Be sure to maximize for greatest viewing!
Steam: now coming direct from Earth.
Ok just because it's cloudy doesn't mean it's not super bright.
One more try to keep my eyes open properlyish!
These mud pits are made by combining H2S (hydrogen sulfide, eep!) gas and lava rocks, turning them into clay. When water is present the steam bubbles up causing mud explosions. We thought this was cool until later in the day when we saw it with a lot more water!
Craters of the Moon as seen from the scenic outlook.
Steam and acid, natural as pie. Actually, more natural than pie!
The Volcano Museum was the perfect place to start our day, because we learned all about volcanos, earthquakes and all other sorts of geothermal earth phenomena that we would see later. And we experienced a simulated earthquake! It was quite shaky, but I found it hard to imagine what it would be like if your whole house and the ground was shaking like that. I know it would be scary though.
Volcano, whoooooosh!
Some of the exhibits were a bit dated, but still awesome. I think this one was created in MS Paint, haha.
Shhhaakkkkeyyy
Scott discovered on the computer system there that we actually were right above a 3.5 earthquake the night before as we were getting ready for bed, but neither of us noticed. Probably assumed Dexter was moving around or something!
The highlight for me was a couple video documentaries on the recent eruptions of Mount Ruapehu. There have been a bunch of eruptions in the last few decades with varying levels of destruction, and the volcano continues to be active. The most crazy thing about this is that there are 2 very popular ski fields on this active volcano. In one of the films the volcano is exploding and spewing out smoke and ash in the background, while in the foreground the ski hill staff is talking about how they hope the ski field can be opened soon, and that there are already people booking in for next weekend. Turns out the whole ski season that year was a write-off.....darn, I bet they were really disappointed not to ski on a layer of ash:
Ski field covered in ash after eruption at Mount Ruapehu 1996
Mount Ruapehu and it's neighbouring volcanoes Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngauruhoe are all southwest from Lake Taupo. There is a really good day hike there (Tongariro Alpine Crossing) that we hope to do some day. But sadly no dogs are allowed so Dexter can't come :(
Mount Ngauruhoe was the volcano used in Lord of the Rings for Mount Doom! I guess because of it's nice shape. Some of the Mount Doom scenes were also filmed at Mount Ruapehu. Cool stuff :)
We were looking for something to do with Dexter today, so we decided to find a good walk to take him on. There was a suggestion on this super tourist map we got to walk from Aratiatia Rapids to Huka Falls in 2 hours and we felt that'd be both a good workout and some fun sights, not to mention a great jaunt for Dexter to participate in. Our original plan was to go from Aratiatia Dam to Huka Falls and back, making it about a 14km hike, which we thought would be mostly flat, given the proximity to the river.
The walk itself from the dam to the falls was not super exciting, mostly because it didn't follow the river exactly and had a number of hills and not much change of scenery. The highlights were seeing the Geothermal energy plant, something that New Zealand should really be exporting (expertise wise!), and a really cool (but equal parts creepy) part of the forest where the bugs were just soooo incredibly loud. I'll post a video below so you can hear how overwhelming they were.
After we got to Huka Falls we decided to continue on all the way back to Taupo and figure out how to get back to the car after that (which I ended up doing by taking a $6 shuttle from Taupo Bungy (maybe I'll do this later!) back to Aratiatia Dam). That walk was much more fun, closer to the river, and we found an awesome hot spring stream along the way where Jacqui soothed her aching feet. I did a rare opt-out of the hot water dip since it was overly crowded and I'd be upset getting back into my socks and shoes afterwards.
Here's a neat map and fitness information for the entire hike: click - boy do I have a big fitness post to blog about one day. I've been logging lots of runs with this thing. Anyways, many awesome pictures from this hike! Read on, fellow adventurers!
Dexter's beside himself with joy over being off leash for most of the 12.5km walk we did.
Any followers of our blog must know how much I love these shorts by now. Oops, embarrassingly wearing them in 95% of all photos! [Jacqui: Which is impressive because you wear them 100% of the time ;) ]
What a nice day for a hike (or as Kiwis say: a tramp)!
Wairakei Power Station in the background, and the Taupo Prawn Farm in the foreground. Would be cool to see eventually, but we didn't on this trip.
A strange area of random felled trees we encountered. I associate telling Jacqui the plot-line of my book I'm reading right now as we walked through this area.
This photo of a thistle flower took me a ridiculous number of tries to center properly. This one's probably the best.
All these flower pictures I take would be much better captioned with species info, but I just have no idea.
These long wheaty strands are found everywhere on our walks, including this one.
Normally Dexter likes to wade in water while he drinks and only goes for a swim if we throw something for him, but this time he did a a little swimming all on his own! Hot puppy!
One of the creepy bugs from the creepy bug forest area.
These guys clapped their wings together for maximum crazy noise.
Another one of the creepiest ones. wtf is it?!
The water colours in the Waikaito River are amazing.
Dexter thinks so too! Leaning puppy.
Huka Falls! Look at the size of the person in the top left for comparison. 200,000 litres of water flow through here every second. It's a deep thin channel that won't get much wider because it's encased by hard lava rock.
Always learning! Fresh water eels are common in NZ but not in Lake Taupo thanks to the crazy current in Huka Falls.
Taken from a bridge over the channel from the lake to the falls. The intensity of the water was incredible.
Taking a little break for a picture with Dexter!
And another self shot of us! We love these. And apparently Adidas hats.
What's this? Steaming hot water just in the middle of no where.
We planned out a day walk along the Waikato River - the longest river in NZ, which passes through Lake Taupo. Our starting point was the Aratiatia Rapids. These days the rapids are home to a hydro dam, one of many on the Waikato River.
Aratiatia Dam (closed)
Several times a day the dam opens letting out the water to fill up the rapids. At first I was a bit disappointed, because I was expecting a huge tidal wave of water to come crashing through. In retrospect this was pretty silly :) What actually happened was that the gates opened slightly to let water start coming through. It started as not much water, but over the course of about 10min the rapids were completely filled and much more rapids-like. It was just SO much water. Pretty cool :)
Where's all the water?
Oh here it comes!!
Whoa!
Scott took a sweet video of the first few minutes of filling, but our bandwidth situation is a bit rough right now, so it might have to wait until the end of the month to upload. Here's a time lapse video I found on YouTube of it. Probably about 6-8 minutes real-time:
