Rotorua

Today Laura and I celebrated our 10th anniversary together. Solana joined in the celebrations too, including making us a card and randomly saying "Happy Anniversary" to us throughout the day. We spent most of the day doing volcanic/geothermal activities, so the Earth moved for us on our anniversary! This morning in Taupo we went to some natural hot river pools - free for anyone to access and just at the side of the mighty Waikato river (1st photo). They were fantastic - geothermal hot water runs into the river, so it is like pools of hot bathwater but you can swim directly from them into the freezing cold river to cool off - a special place. After that we went up to Aratiatia Dam, a dam on the same river, that is opened every few hours - we timed our visit for one of these openings and it was quite an impressive sight, seeing thousands of litres of water rushing through to make white water rapids and many new pools in the river beyond the dam (2nd photo). Unfortunately, Solana and I had a fall when we were scrambling down to the viewpoint - it was minor but I now have 2 scraped knees, like a 4-year-old, and a ripped pair of trousers! We had a picnic lunch and then did a walk in the "Craters of the Moon" geothermal area (photos #3 & #4), where we saw many fumaroles (steam vents) and bubbling mud pools - it did look like an other-worldly place... We called into the honey centre on our way out of Taupo and got to see bees in their hives and learn some interesting facts - my favourite of which was that it would only take about 30g of honey to fuel a bee to fly all the way around the world!

We drove on towards Rotorua, an area famed for its geothermal activity. On the way we visited Wai-O-Tapu, another volcanic area, with some pretty big and impressive sights. There, we saw some larger bubbling mud pools (5th photo), rocks and pools coloured in many different colours and shades by the minerals, more fumaroles (some only a couple of feet from the walkway!). Our favourite was the "Champagne Pools", so-called because of the many bubbles of carbon dioxide they contain (you can see the water actually fizzing), with amazingly striking colours around the edges of the pools (last photo). We arrived in Rotorua around teatime and immediately noticed that what people say about the whole place stinking of sulphur is entirely true! We went out for a delicious Japanese meal for dinner, then finished our celebrations by opening and enjoying the bottle of pink Pelorus fizz that we bought at the Cloudy Bay winery. Our motel room here also has a pool outside the bathroom that you can fill with geothermically heated water - so we made use of that too. It is a bit odd - you climb into it out of the bathroom window(!) but all 3 of us fitted into it easily and it was great to have our own private hot pool.

Here's to many more adventures during the next 10 years and beyond...Read more