We awoke today to sun and heat. No breakfast on the deck this morning though - our room didn't have one. We packed and checked out, and set off to look at another thermal area. We had already visited the biggest and most colourful one on our tour, but this one is slightly different. It is called Hell's Gate, and it has a hot waterfall, which Paul wanted to see. This is it, it looks just like any other waterfall.
The water, however, is at 40 degrees centigrade, which is about the the temperature of a hot shower. It was used by Maori warriors to bathe their wounds after fights.
Local Maori call the area Tikitere. It was named Hell's Gate by George Bernard Shaw when he visited in the early 1900s, and he so impressed the local Maori that from that time they allowed Hell's Gate to be used as the English name. The pools are mostly of muted colours, but the landscape looks more like the moon, it is very bare and dry. I seem, unaccountably, to have forgotten to take a proper overall view of the area, but this should give you an idea. The area round the pools is completely devoid of any vegetation, and everything is shrouded in steam.
There are some very interesting pools. The one below is called The Devil's Cauldron.
Rising steam makes these patterns in the black mud. Black mud has been used for the treatment of rheumatism and arthritis.
One of the most interesting features in the area is the Mud Volcano
It first appeared about 6 years ago, and as it continues to grow, the path has had to be moved. It is the tallest one in New Zealand, and it is still growing. About every 6 weeks or so, when the mud has hardened, the pressure builds up to the point of eruption. It erupts over a large area, so far during the night. We hurried past just in case it decided to do it during the day!
These are the Steaming Cliffs
This is the hottest pool in the park, 122 degrees C at the surface and 144 degrees at 1 meter down. Apparently the boiling activity is constantly changing, and can reach a height of 3 metres. The path does not go too close to this one!
This is the Cooking Pool, which has been used by Maori for hundreds of years to cook their food.
Apparently it has a constant temperature of 98 degrees C and will cook a whole pig in two hours. It is claimed that there is no tainting of the food. I have to say I would need to be pretty desperate for cooked food before I would put it in there!
You can bathe your own feet in the warm mud, and indeed are invited to do so near the entrance.
For some unaccountable reason, I was unable to persuade Paul he would like to do this before we left!
We set off to drive round Lake Rotorua, and managed with some difficulty to take a few views of the Lake. Hamurana Springs was easier to photograph, and also very pretty.
We started along Highway 5 towards Hamilton. The landscape was amazing, so many volcanic cones, some not much bigger than the mud volcano at Hell's Gate, all piled together in a jumble. It was very hard to take photographs, there was nowhere to stop and there were a series of heavy lorries thundering along behind us. My attempts to take photos out of my window resulted in some dreadful language, as trees, bushes, signposts and telegraph poles all jumped into the picture between the time I pressed the button and the time the camera took the picture. I didn't end up with a single picture worth looking at. How can New Zealand name a road Thermal Explorers' Highway and not provide one single spot from which you can explore it? You barely get time to glance at it as you flash past in the car, let alone explore it!
We made a stop at Hamilton so we could look at the gardens, which are famous, and are the town's most popular visitor attraction. We certainly enjoyed them. There is a group of gardens called Paradise Gardens, which we particularly liked. The Japanese Garden was delightful, with a pavilion leading onto a pond.
The Chinese one was also eye-catching, with moon gates, interesting stones, statues, two beautiful bridges over a pond and a pavilion overlooking the river, not many of which features I can get into my picture.
The Indian one was simply stunning, with so many colours of flowers so densely packed together, and two fountains, one in the centre and one under the pavilion. It was very hard to photograph, as several big noisy parties from a tour bus were running about shouting and shoving.
Paul preferred the Renaissance Garden, which was also stunning.
We admired several other gardens, a Maori one, an English one, a herb garden and so on. It was very hot, and I had begun to feel very dehydrated. We walked down a shady path by the Waikato River to cool off.
It was really time to travel on into Auckland. During our journey there, the rain started very heavily, but after a while it went off again. We had chosen a hotel close to the airport, and as I write this I can see planes from the bedroom window. Tomorrow morning we will return the car and then go to the airport to catch the plane to Fiji.
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