Ciarán & Elaine's Travelog

Saturday, June 24, 2006

Oi, Geyser!


We left Rotorua this morning and went to the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland park. There's a geyser there (called Lady Knox Geyser) that erupts at 10.15 every day so we had to run to make sure we would see it. It was totally worth the effort - so cool to see stuff like this that you could never see at home. However it was a bit surprising to find out that they actually make the geyser erupt at 10.15, we presumed it just happened naturally. A guy throws a bit of soap into the cone and as he explained a bit about how geysers work, it started bubbling behind him. After about 2 minutes it just started spurting water into the air and it went up to about 15metres high! It was cool and really amazing to see all this hot water (150°c) gushing into the air in front of you. Naturally, it would erupt every 48 hours or so but I guess they make more money if they can guarantee visitors that it's going to blow at a certain time every day!

We then went for a walk around the thermal park. We saw some crazy things that you just can't see at home at all like bubbling mud pits, huge holes where the rock was melted away by the volcanic fumes below it, and really cool champagne pools which looked brilliant. There was steam everywhere and the smell was rotten but it was a great day.

On to Taupo...

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