Lake Taupo is a volcanic caldera created 1,800 years ago, the result of the most violent eruption on Earth in the last 5,000 years. Across the lake are three gorgeous snow covered volcanoes. One of these, Ruapehu, ruined the 1995 and 1996 skiing seasons by spewing black ash for months.
A store manager told us about the Tangiwai Disaster that occurred on Christmas Eve, 1953. Her mother was working in Wellington and had a reservation to take a train to Hamilton to see her family. At the train station, she was told that there were three spaces on an earlier train, and she was offered a seat, which she took. That night, a volcano erupted, and the lahar (mud flow) washed out a train bridge along the route. The train her mother was originally scheduled to take went off the bridge into the Whangaehu River. Over 100 people died.
Back when he was a newly minted geologist, Steve did geothermal exploration in the western U.S. He read about the geothermal activity at Rotorua and the geothermal power plant at Wairakei. He never thought he’d actually see these places. We hoped we would be able to take a tour of the power plant, which was described as self promoting and open daily in our Rough Guide, but unfortunately it was closed to the public a few years ago and will be replaced by a more modern plant soon. There will be a rare public tour on November 15, in honor of the plant’s fiftieth anniversary. We think it was the second or third geothermal power plant in the world, after Iceland and/or Italy.
Twice we have gotten on the wrong road, and not recognized it until we had gone more than a half hour in the wrong direction. This is pretty easy to do here, because if you don’t notice the sign for the route you want as you circle the roundabout in a counter clock wise direction in bewilderment and fear of being hit, and you start off the wrong road, there won’t be any more route signs to confirm or deny that you have chosen the right route. The only place the routes are marked are at roundabouts, and the only way to figure out that you have gotten on the wrong road is to study the names of the towns on the map along your route and compare them to the names of the towns you go through, and if they don’t match up, eventually you have to admit that you screwed up, turn around, and go back.
For this reason, we had to drive almost all the way back to Rotorua to visit a must see attraction, Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland. It was definitely worth the trip. The Champagne Pool is on the cover of the Rough Guide to New Zealand, and its green and orange shore is gorgeous. Tiny champagne-like bubbles break the surface of the pool with a fizzing sound. Steam covers the lake, so one has to be patient and wait for a breeze to blow the steam away in order to get a good photo. A variety of mineral deposits give each bubbling pool its own colorful character.
Up the road from Wai-O-Tapu is a pond that has hot bubbling mud. The mud is spit into the air with an amusing "ppppt!"
I added the White Backed Magpie and the Fantail to my life list.
The reason for all the earthquakes, geysers, volcanoes and geothermal activity is said to be that two plates collide at the North Island. The Pacific Plate is subducting below the Indian-Australian Plate, if you believe in that sort of thing.
Off the road between Rotorua and Taupo on the Waikato River is the amazing Huka Falls. Huka means foam in Maori. The river is suddenly funneled into a narrow channel, and the power of the falls is as impressive as its stunning clear turquoise color. We are starting to notice that New Zealand rivers and ocean water have a very beautiful and distinctive swimming pool color, and the water is invariably free of sediment.
When we were taking turns minding our laundry, we watched television in our room. I was shocked to see bits of a documentary called The Road to Hell, about the influence Christian fundamentalists have had on the Bush administration and its policies regarding gay rights, abortion and pornography. The view of the documentary is that the extremists on the right have created a climate of intolerance, hatred and violence. We don’t watch TV, so I don’t know if this sort of thing gets aired in the US, but I have to doubt it.
Steve reported seeing a cartoon called Lil’ Bush that was sort of in the style of The Simpsons and very irreverently portrayed Bush as a bungling idiot who was under the thumb of the King of Saudi Arabia. Maybe this sort of stuff is on TV in the U.S., but we sure haven’t ever seen anything like it. (Update: when we got home, we discovered Lil' Bush is produced in the U.S. by Comedy Central). I can’t imagine that any U.S. companies would risk the wrath of the Bush administration by sponsoring a program like this. It was amazing to us that Kiwis are so aware of our government and so contemptuous of it.
We see ads for Tui beer on many of the bars here. We figured it must be the working man’s beer, and it would taste like Bud, but we felt it was our duty as tourists to check it out. It turns out it’s a lager, and darker and tastier than we expected. The bartender told us Tui is the beer of the North Island, so we did a taste test and also got a draft of the South Island favorite, Speight’s Old Dark Five Malt Ale. We liked the Speight’s (pronounced Spate’s) even better.
November 8 we stayed at the Waterfront Lodge in Napier, a coastal town on the east side of the North Island. Our room is a small one with twin beds and bath shared with 13 other rooms for NZ$65. It’s my least favorite accommodation so far, but we had already checked three other hostels and I was ready to give it a rest. I wish we could have stayed at the lovely Criterion Art Deco in the Art Deco district. It has the most amazing two story ceiling Art Deco lobby, but it was full.
We noticed today that there are no commercial billboards in New Zealand. What a refreshing change to be spared the visual affront and spiritual assault of crass commercialism. However, there are plenty of government sponsored billboards that constantly nag us to slow down, take a nap and don't drink and drive.
