Wai O Tapu Geothermal park

We started Christmas day with a quick clean up and check out from our AirBnB in Rotorua and hit the road for Wellington.  It was raining to start the day, but thankfully by the time we drove up the canyon and arrived at the thermal park, it was just dripping.

This is Lady Knox geyser.  We were expecting a 10:15 eruption as noted in tour info.  We arrived on scene with a lot of other people and stood staring at this small cone.   The viewing area was very close to it, especially when comparing with our previous Old Faithful experience in Yellowstone.  We weren't sure what to expect. 

What we got was a park ranger who stood directly next to it at 10:15 and told us the history of some work crews that used to come here to bath in the springs and discovered that when soap mixed in this area, it produced a geyser on demand.  She proceeded to drop in some 'environmentally friendly' soap, and the geyser erupted.  She said it would do it on its own every 2-3 days, but we probably didn't want to wait that long...

It started as a small bubbling over, then quickly got larger. 

We were told that during rainy season, it could go for an an hour.  Our show lasted about 30 seconds.

 The North and South Islands straddle the Indian-Australian and Pacific plates, with the Pacific plate sliding under the Australian one, causing friction and heat that creates the active volcanic and thermal zones on the North island.    The volcanic zone extends up to White Island (which recently had an explosion that killed several people from a cruise ship), and down to lake Taupo, for a total reach of about 250 km long and 80 km wide).    There are 17 major geothermal fields in this area that provide a total of 5% of NZ's power.  

There are over 14,000 earth quakes in NZ yearly making them the "shaky isles".  

Wai O Tapu is on the edge of the largest caldera (sunken volcano) in the Southern hemisphere.  

Sulphur coloring on the rocks. 

Swallow's nested in some of the walls of these sunken pits.  The heat keeps their eggs warm without them even having to sit on them. 

Some collapsed areas where the acidity weakened the area around the vents

Above and below is the Champagne pool, occupying a 700 year old crater.  The crater is 62 meters deep and water from the underground spring starts at 230 degrees celsius, cooling to 74 celsius at the surface.  The bubbles in the pool are carbon dioxide (Making it better smelling than some of the others with sulphur gas).  The orange around the rim is arsenic and antimony sulphur. 

This particular pool has a PH of 2!  Very acidic.  We won't be getting close.