It takes about an hour to get to Rororua from Arapuni and we arrived just as it was getting dark. We had decided forehand to stay at the YHA as they have camping spots for campervans and were the cheapest we could find – we are not being particularly extravagant! However, on arriving there, Meg was very much less than keen on the place, and I understand why: It was very much a 'resort'; which would be fantastic if we were in the KiwiExperience bus (18-30 crowd), but it was a big change from the usual campsites we have stayed at, which are normally just hidden away beauty spots deep in the bush. However, after a little persuading (we did go and look at another hostel just to check what the others were like), Meg did agree that maybe we could put up with the YHA for a night or 2, and then we would be heading away from Rotorua.
We decided that the following day we would head to the museum at the lake's edge and soak up some culture/history/information on the city.
However, before we did anything else, we made beef goulash for tea.
For those that don't know, Rotorua is very much a tourist town. It is actually a city, but feels like a town. However, we have heard a few people refer to it as 'Roto-vegas', and it is easy to see why. There are TONNES of 'cultural' and 'authentic' activities on offer, but there are so multitudinous and ubiquitous that it is easy to be cynical and unsure of the authenticity that you are being shown. For instance, as we signed into our hostel on the first night, we had to wait for a bus-load of travellers to be shipped off to a maori village where they would be guests for the night – get a maori concert and hangi (a Maori meal/BBQ), and take part in the maori 'way of life'. All for X amount of dollars. It felt very plastic to me. Apologies to anyone if this isn't the case, and if in fact it is a very honest representation of the culture, but I don't like the idea of a pre-prepared 'show' being fed to me. As our friends in Arapuni have since mentioned to us, in the summer there will be no shortages of genuine maori hangi's going on at their village where we will be more than welcome to come along and even join in the preparation - I think that sounds a bit more 'authentic'. So after a bit of discussion and information at the iSite, we decided not to bother with these 'shows' that a lot of people go to, but instead focus on the geothermal wonders that form the natural history in Roturua.
In the 19th Century, people came from all over the world (well, Europe) to view a geological wonderment – the pink and white terraces – these were huge terraces of silicate deposit. We had seen paintings of these in the Auckland Art Gallery a few weeks ago and were fascinated by these images of strange formations that we have never seen before. The heated water from the earth was spouted out by various geysers and used to trickle down the terraces and people would come to bathe in them. The whole area was inhabited by different maori tribes who had settled in the area for its obvious thermal advantages – cooking and cleaning was easy(!) and they also had strong spiritual connections with the land. Of course, when the Europeans started coming to New Zealand, the area became hot tourism property and the local town – Rotorua – grew in size and importance.
So, we found most of this and more out at the Rotorua museum. We also had our sandwiches outside in the ever-so-english Government gardens, replete with dozens of bowling lawns and fountains and manicured lawns/flower-beds.
The museum was built at the start of the 20th Century, and is very English in style. It was even built in the style of houses found in Stratford-upon-Avon to give a very English/Shakespearean feel. It was initially built as a Spa house, to take advantage of the underground heated water, and was very popular – all the rich locals and foreigners used to come to try and cure their ailments using different hot water methods. On our guided tour around the museum we got to see all the old baths and the underground workings, where the pipes had to be continually repaired (because of all the corroding elements in the water). Unfortunately, the building struggled wth finances in the mid-20th century and had to close. The building would have been knocked down had it not been for a nightclub (Tudor towers) taking the builing on in the 60's up until 1990. What a cool place to have a nightclub!
Since then the council have bought the building and have opened the musem up. They are also completing the building to the original plans (as it was only about 80% completed initially), so one small section was closed to the public while building work was going on.
In one part of the museum, there was a section devoted to the 1886 eruption of Mount Tarawera.
While in Auckland, we had visited the Art Gallery, which had many paintings representing an explosion from the 19th century. We had found these really interesting but hadn't quite realised that the volcano that had exploded was so close to Rotorua. In the museum they had a small 'interactive' cinema (Meg was given a few frights!) that tried to convey the order and magnitude of the events.
On June 10 1886 at 2am in the morning, the volcano erupted unexpectedly and destroyed neighbouring villages, valleys and basically anything in its path, including the famous white and pink terraces. There are a few first-hand accounts to read from the people that did survive, and it is all utterly absorbing. I don't know what other eruptions in the world have taken place since 1886. I'm sure there are plenty, but I'm also sure that I haven't been this close to any before, so this had firmed up our decision for the next day – to visit Waimungu, the valley that had been destroyed, and also created by, Tarawera.
However, at the end of our stay at the museum, we had arranged to meet up with Megan Ince. We had gone up to the roof of the museum to see the lookout over Rotorua, which was pretty impressive. And just as we go to the top we spied Megan's red car pulling up outside – perfect timing!
Meg had left her waterproof jacket in Arapuni and Megan had kindly offered to drop it off with us in Rotorua as she was also doing some errands in town. So we had a hot chocolate with her and her work friend Anne in the cafe. It was very pleasant, and it was here that Anne assured us we would find more 'real' maori experiences off-hand than the pre-arranged ones in Rotorua.
As we left the museum, we were asked to dip our hands in some water and flick the droplets behind us over out shoulders – this is a maori ritual and is used to make sure that we do not take any of the 'tapu' (sacredness of any of the treasures – be it stories or artefacts) with us into the outside world.
For dinner, we had lamb and chickpea stew. It was delicious.
We were very excited the next day to be going to Waimangu. It was the first 'touristy' thing that we had done on our journey to New Zealand, and we were prepared for our wallets to take a substantial hit. However, it was well worth the money, and was one of the best things we have done so far.
Waimangu is about 20km south of Rotorua, and is the valley that lies directly south-west of Mount Tarawera. After the eruption in 1886, the area was left well alone for some time, until someone decided to venture back and check out what had happened. The area was bought up and it was decided that the area should be left as a experiment – to be the only area in New Zealand where the wildlife is allowed to remain untouched and left alone to develop as it is. In other parts of New Zealand, hunting certain animals and the removal of certain weeds/pests is allowed, but in Waimungu everything is completely natural, and they obviously know the exact start date of this 'world' – 10 June 1886.
It is still incredibly active, geo-thermally-wise. We followed the tracks through the valley, and went past some of the most amazing sights I've ever seen. The valley is made up of different sized craters, all created by the volcanic eruption, and all impressively deep in the ground – up to 100 metres! Of course, some of the craters have lakes in the bottom, so you can't see the bottom of the actual crater, but even so, you walk past/through these large round holes in the ground.
As well as the craters, there is still heated water being released from the ground below. In 'Echo Crater' there was Frying Pan Lake, which was a still, calm body of water, apart from the fact that it is also the world's largest hot spring, and steam was rising and swirling from all over it. It was so weird. Apparently the water on the surface was 55ºC, but at the bottom of the lake it was boiling water.....
We also saw 'Inferno Crater', which had a sky-blue body of water in it. The water level there apparently has a rigid 38-day cycle, during which it fills gradually, then oscillates for a while, then overflows for 4 days, and then rapidly falls away. We saw it at the usual lowpoint, but it made up by being at its most sky-blue. It was fantastic. Of course, you weren't allowed anywhere near any of the water along the course of the valley as it was quite dangerously hot in places. There were bubbling rock pools all along the valley, amazing terraced rock formations, and steaming cliffs.
It was a strange experience to walk alongside a stream, but not allowed to go near it because of the temperature of the water, and when you stopped and listened, you could hear the bubbling of the hot water.
The walk culminated in arriving at Lake Rotomahana, which lies at the bottom of Mount Tarawera. It is here that the Pink and White terraces used to be, but they got destroyed by the eruption. The lake is actually 20 times the size that it used to be before the eruption. To give some perspective on the scale of the eruption, the depth of the lake pre-eruption was between 4 and 5 metres; now it is nearly 100 metres deep in places. While we waited for a boat ride around the lake to see some other effects that were not visible from land, we spent some time watching the black swans in the lake – there was a massive contingent of them on one part of the lake – we later found that they were there because that was where the hot water from further up the valley was flowing into the lake, and attracted the swans to bathe/mate in the warm waters. By the way, they don't have white swans here, just black ones. We also heard some rustling in the undergrowth, and were pleasantly surprised to see some wild wallabies sniffing around in the foliage.
On the actual boat trip, we were taken much close to Tarawera, which was lit beautifully by the late afternoon sun, and saw some markings on the cliffs that showed different deposit levels over the years, as well as some crazy steaming cliffs and beaches – we were told that if we dived into the lake, it would be refreshingly cold, but that we wouldn't be able to step onto the beach because it would scald our feet
In the evening, we headed to a DOC campsite by Lake Rerewhakaitu, and were lucky to be driving during the most amazing sunset we've seen yet in NZ.
The campsite was just south of Tarawera. Meg didn't realise til the morning that we were camped so close to the volcano, and don't think she would have slept quite so easily had she known the night before!
For dinner we had leftover lamb stew with some mash potato. It was still delicious.
The next day we ideally wanted to walk up Mount Tarawwera, but it turns out that the land is protected by and owned by a few maori tribes and access is prohibited without the right permission. So we'll have to wait to do that and hopefully arrange to do it at another time.
When we had arrived at the campsite the night before it had been very late and we hadn't really been able to see our whereabouts, but in the morning we were treated to an incredibly calm lake right in front of us, the intimidating but magnificent Mount Tarawera on the other, and a crystal blue sky above us. Needless to say, we spent quite a while snapping away on the cameras in the morning before we set off on our way.
We didn't really have any plans for the day, and were just intending on heading towards our next main destination, Napier. We could have taken a less direct, but faster route via Taupo, but we decided to take the State Highway 38, that took us through the Whirinaki Forest and Te Urewera National park, and we were glad that we did. We listened and sang to Simon and Garfunkel on the way, and felt very happy.
We stopped at Murupara and visited the DOC office and got some good information on the attractions in the forest/national park. By this time it was getting into the afternoon, and it has now started to get dark by 5.30pm, so we knew we didn't have too long if we wanted to get much done before finding our campsite. We therefore did a short walk to see the 'H-tree', which is cleverly named: it is a tree, and it is shaped like an H.
We then camped at Mangamate waterfalls campsite but felt slightly uneasy: we were the only campers, and had warnings from friends in Arapuni and the DOC office that there had been 'occurences' in the area, so we decided to move on to the next campsite where there would hopefully be more campers. We drove onto the Ohaku Road campsite (about 30 minutes along a dirt road in the ptich black), and found John, a kiwi/geordie (he moved from Newcastle about 50 years earlier), who now lived at the campsite after selling his house the year before. He made us feel a bit more at ease so we camped near him. We cooked meatballs.
In the morning, we found ourselves surrounded by beautifully dense bush, and felt in the middle of nowhere. We had a chat to John, who had a less than favourable opinion on the maori's and was reasonably convinced that they were to blame for most, if not all, of society's ills. We took what he said with a pinch of salt and went on our way.
The next day (Friday) we drove further along the SH38. Crikey, what a road. It is unsealed for about 100km, and drives through some of the best scenery we've seen. The road is scattered with wild horses, cattle, pigs, goats, and landslides. It drives along cliff-top roads and over numerous roads/streams/waterfalls. It took us about 3 hours, going at no faster than 30-40kmh, but it was brill.
We arrived at the DOC office at Aniwaniwa, and Meg struck up a friendship with the lady there, Jane, who was knowledgable about meditation and had contacts around NZ. She said she'd email Meg about some good places.
Jane also told us about the walks in the area. After leaving the office, we went to see the nearby waterfalls, of which there were many.
We camped a couple of kilometres down the road at the Lake Waikaremoana motor camp. It was quite full of people coming to the lake for the fishing opportunities in the area, and the fact that it was the start of a long weekend in NZ (they get the monday as a bank holiday for, wait for it......, the Queens Birthday!), meant that there was quite a few families visiting the area. It was quite nice to be around people for a night though, and we enjoyed the use of the hot showers and kitchen/laundry facilites.
In the morning, we were treated to a beautifully clear day except for the adjacent lake Waikaremoana being enshrouded by mist – it was really magical.
We headed to the DOC office for the start of the Ruapani circuit - a 6 hour circular walk that we had been told about. The walk took us through wetlands and swampland, up to the Lake Waikareiti. We saw some mad purple mushrooms on the way, and had to contend with a few paths of water!
The lake Waikareiti is totally isolated. There are no roads close by to it, and the closest path to it is a 1 hour uphill trek. The lake has 2 islands on it, one of which has its own lake on it, creating a unique lake-on-an-island-on-a-lake. It is possible to hire boats on the lake, and people use them to fish the trout-rich waters, but there is not usually a soul there, and it was totally quiet when we got there. It felt like an honour. So we had our cheese and peanut butter sandwiches at the boat shelter. (Important note: the cheese and peanut butter weren't TOGETHER in the same sandwich. We had one cheese sandwich, and one peanut butter sandwich).
We have been keeping an eye on the weather forecast, and the region was scheduled to get a coating of snow on Sunday, so although we would have quite liked to stay for another day or so and maybe try some fishing, we thought it sensible to get Peggy out of danger, so we set off for Napier when we finished walking at about 3pm. Meg drove all the way, and we have now arrived in Napier. On first look, Napier looks very cool. I have read that Napier was the victim of NZ's biggest recorded earthquake in 1931, and most of the town was destroyed. So the architects and designers took the chance to rebuild it all in the fashion of the day – Art Deco style. It is now, along with Miami Beach, the largest collection of Art Deco buildings in the world. We have had a wander round the streets this evening and seen some ace buildings, and will do more of the same tomorrow. We are staying at 'Wally's backpackers', where they are letting us park and sleep in the carpark, and have just treated ourselves to an average curry in the only Indian we could find in the town. The weather over the next day or so is supposed to be terrible (the weather forecaster on TV said he's 'never seen any weather system like it before....'), so we may keep our heads down for the next few days. Our next planned stops are Palmerston North, and then Wellington. But we are discussing the possibility of doing a few days/couple of weeks work, in order to replenish funds. However, this depends on whether we can actually find any work....
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