If you ever start questioning such things, know that almost certainly the common component is the water. Going to see the geyser which is spitting out muddy water is a brilliant idea but don’t fall for any coffee anywhere close to Waiotapu. Just don’t. Even if you feel that your coffee needs some coffee that morning, don’t.
The sad true is that there was no one to inform us about this issue, thus we got 4 cups of boiling muddy water with some traces of a strange kind of coffee. (I’m not sure how to explain if water could be hotter than boiling but it seemed like it was.) Nevertheless, going to see the geyser and all the surreal surroundings in that area was no mistake.
And so we went to Waiotapu not far away from Rotorua. If somebody ever tells you that what you see is not a real geyser because you need to pour something in to make it erupt, don’t listen to them. I’d rather see this happening than sit there for hours, hugging my cup of mud, and waiting for a divine intervention. (Seriously, I have never tasted anything as bad as the coffee in the Waiotapu information center. Something was terribly wrong with it and I surely don’t want to know what.)
OK, enough about that. The place by itself is really worth visiting. That active geothermal area can be found in the lists of the most surreal places in the world. That is no surprise because of all the colours and hot steam around but if you expect to see a couple of devils dancing around, you might be disappointed. Despite that, the smell of the earth’s depths is definitely gonna welcome you. In general, all the region of Rotorua is one of New Zealand’s places which are blessed with free thermal heating and cursed with the smell of sulfur. It and other chemical minerals colour the waters in that area. All the colourful lakes, some of which are boiling, and mud pools help to understand why New Zealand is being shaken from time to time by severe earthquakes – the heat and pressure, that you’d expect to stay deep deep in the middle of the earth, in such places gets really close to the surface. Don’t worry too much, tourist don’t usually get into any accidents (unless they take their children with them and they are not keen to go for a short walk that is at the very most 3 km long).
The other interesting thing that I noticed is that, despite the fact that the water around you is going to be boiling, if you go there in the winter it’s going to be rather cold. Though when I start thinking about the smell that should linger in the air in the summer, I choose a little chill.
At the very end I would like to mention that it’s very important to stay on the tracks in such places and not to do anything stupid. Of course, that doesn’t mean that if you threw a stone in some pit you would be arrested by Greenpeace. (But I would like to believe that one day the people that prevent you from enjoying the place with their selfie sticks and hundreds of photos with themselves will be punished by having all their computers’ memory deleted.) Everybody who can – go and enjoy yourself.
