The Thermal Woderland-Rotorua,New Zealand

The city of Rotorua is around 225 Km away from the centre of Auckland,NZ.The Inter City Bus took a little more than 4 hours to reach there. It was a sunny day and the well laid city roads with blooming  flowers in their boulevards were looking elegant . We walked down to our hotel ear the lake front through  the beautiful Tutanekai Street which is lined with around two dozen eateries’  of different nationalities including Indian. The city was in a festive mood Despite the sulfurous  smell hanging in the air we all liked the place at the first sight.

The earliest Maori visitors who hailed from Hawaii around 800 years back perhaps found two lakes joined together through a Gulf. “Roto” means lake and “Rua” means two. So came the name of the Place and also the name of the biggest lake here. Rotorua , as the guide book reminds, sits on top of most violent segment  of  the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Violent volcanic activities over centuries have created geo-thermal wonders all over the district.  Wherever one turns in this extraordinary area, the earth bubbles, boils, spits and oozes. The whole region has 16 natural lakes (some of which are fuming),cold and  boiling pools of mud ,collapsed craters, water and steaming fumaroles.

Our hotel was located just on the bank of Lake Rotorua and centre of the city. We had easy access to the Government Gardens and Museum  which is housed in a building which previously was  a Bath House designed along the lines of European Spas. Presently it demonstrated the glorious past and evolution of Maori art, culture and customs. It also showed a short movie describing the most destructive volcanic event  in New Zealand’s recorded history which occurred here on June 10^th,1886.

Next day a prefixed shuttle bus took us to Wai-O-Tapu  which has the largest area of surface thermal activity of any hydrothermal system in the Taupo Volcanic Zone. Wai-O-Tapu   while translated in English means Sacred Waters. The early Maori residents of this region believed throughout ages on the healing power of the water of the hot spring here. Beneath the ground of this area runs a system of streams which are heated by magma left over from earlier eruptions. The water is hot up to 300 degrees Celsius and absorbs minerals out of the rocks. The wide range of colors in the area are all natural and are due to different mineral elements.

Our starting point at Wai-O-Tapu was the famous Lady Knox Geyser. It came into operation around 150 years back. As we learnt from the Guide who briefly lectured about it this it used to erupt erratically beforehand. Subsequently the authorities thought it best to control the eruption by some chemical process. We saw it erupted at around 10.15 am. The flow of fuming water reached a height of around 20 meters.

We walked through a walkway as defined in a map provided there. It took around 75 minutes for us to complete exploring the spectacular nature. On our way we found craters of different colors and sizes. They were upto 50 meters in diameters and upto 20 meters deep. Several contained hot water springs and extensive sulphur deposits. Along our way there were spectacular pools and the contents were differently colored. As if to do justice to their colorful appearnces and peculiar sizes they were poetically named. There were The Champagne pool, The Oyster pool, Opal pool and The Artist’s Palette . Sometimes the pools are fairly large, up to 65m in diameter and around 62 m in depth. They all looked beautiful no doubt but very hot and fuming always.

To me the thermal wonders of Rotorua appeared splendid and surprisingly beautiful   dangerous. But at the same time it all through reminded the dangerous and violent volcanic eruptions which caused the beauty here. It always came to my mind the observations  of the experts that there would certainly be further eruptions in this area in the future.
This area in fact is a beautiful hell but hell no doubt.