Volcanoes, mudpools and geezers (sorry geysers)
Hello again
Quite a bit to catch on, so I'll try to be brief (hoorah I hear you say!)
After leaving the glowworms behind, I headed briefly southwest, where I visited New Plymouth (great view of Mount Taranaki) and Wanganui, where I had a nice ride on a steam paddlesteamer, followed by a lounge in the (bargain priced) motel pool to recover (it's a hard life).
Back on the road, I headed up to Taupo (in the middle of the north island). A very scenic drive, and exciting too with the steep mountain roads, followed by the bleak volcanic terrain around Tongariro (nearly running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere added a bit of extra spice!)
Lake Taupo is a massive volcanic crater, bigger than Singapore I am informed! Much of the scenery of the area was created by a massive volcanic explosion 1800 years ago, that was recorded in Rome and China. This part of NZ is very unstable, due to it being the boundary between 2 tectonic plates, the shifting of these plates causing numerous small earthquakes, hot mineral springs (which I happily lounged in), geothermal energy from the hot underwater source, and numerous geothermal sights.
Rotoroa nearby has even more of these geothermal wonders, with holes in the ground all over the place, bleching out hot sulphurous gases, and strangely coloured water, filled with minerals (arsenic!) - and yes, the place stinks as a result, that rotten egg smell everywhere! I spent several days exploring here, Waiotapu was the most spectacular, and has a wonderful pool of boiling mud (a bit reminiscent of Fraggle Rock someone suggested, though I can't remember!). Te Puia has the massive geyser, Pohuta, which blows water up to 20metres up, being well worth the one hour wait for it to go off. Yet, alnost next to these primeval looking scenes you can find thick forest, including a wonderful redwood forest, where you can lose yourself again.
Rotorua is very touristy, it's noticeable after coming from other less visited areas, wheremost of the tourists are us Brits!
Leaving Rotorua I headed briefly to Te Puke (which doesn't sound as rude as it looks) to tour a Kiwi Fruit farm, which was quite interesting, and visit a very good car collection, which houses a fine number of post war British cars, and a nice selction of old magazines to browse through, with many from the 60s and 70s. The highlight for me in the collection were the Ford Zephyrs, with all 4 four versions together, from the dumpy Mk1 of the mid 50s to the hideous Mk4 of the early 70s.
From there I headed to Whakatane (which does sound quite rude, the phonetic spelling would trigger the IT server censors!), where after being kept awake by a (tuneful) Polynesian sing song at 2 in the morning, I was not a happy bunny.......In fact I ended up calling the local council noise patrol, which did the trick, and nobody slashed my tyres as a result, so no hard feelings!
Mike
Quite a bit to catch on, so I'll try to be brief (hoorah I hear you say!)
After leaving the glowworms behind, I headed briefly southwest, where I visited New Plymouth (great view of Mount Taranaki) and Wanganui, where I had a nice ride on a steam paddlesteamer, followed by a lounge in the (bargain priced) motel pool to recover (it's a hard life).
Back on the road, I headed up to Taupo (in the middle of the north island). A very scenic drive, and exciting too with the steep mountain roads, followed by the bleak volcanic terrain around Tongariro (nearly running out of petrol in the middle of nowhere added a bit of extra spice!)
Lake Taupo is a massive volcanic crater, bigger than Singapore I am informed! Much of the scenery of the area was created by a massive volcanic explosion 1800 years ago, that was recorded in Rome and China. This part of NZ is very unstable, due to it being the boundary between 2 tectonic plates, the shifting of these plates causing numerous small earthquakes, hot mineral springs (which I happily lounged in), geothermal energy from the hot underwater source, and numerous geothermal sights.
Rotoroa nearby has even more of these geothermal wonders, with holes in the ground all over the place, bleching out hot sulphurous gases, and strangely coloured water, filled with minerals (arsenic!) - and yes, the place stinks as a result, that rotten egg smell everywhere! I spent several days exploring here, Waiotapu was the most spectacular, and has a wonderful pool of boiling mud (a bit reminiscent of Fraggle Rock someone suggested, though I can't remember!). Te Puia has the massive geyser, Pohuta, which blows water up to 20metres up, being well worth the one hour wait for it to go off. Yet, alnost next to these primeval looking scenes you can find thick forest, including a wonderful redwood forest, where you can lose yourself again.
Rotorua is very touristy, it's noticeable after coming from other less visited areas, wheremost of the tourists are us Brits!
Leaving Rotorua I headed briefly to Te Puke (which doesn't sound as rude as it looks) to tour a Kiwi Fruit farm, which was quite interesting, and visit a very good car collection, which houses a fine number of post war British cars, and a nice selction of old magazines to browse through, with many from the 60s and 70s. The highlight for me in the collection were the Ford Zephyrs, with all 4 four versions together, from the dumpy Mk1 of the mid 50s to the hideous Mk4 of the early 70s.
From there I headed to Whakatane (which does sound quite rude, the phonetic spelling would trigger the IT server censors!), where after being kept awake by a (tuneful) Polynesian sing song at 2 in the morning, I was not a happy bunny.......In fact I ended up calling the local council noise patrol, which did the trick, and nobody slashed my tyres as a result, so no hard feelings!
Mike
posted by Michael Conway at
10:18 pm
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