Following the Fault Line

There was a definite sense in our muscles this morning that we had climbed a mountain yesterday. Today, our guide was planning to summit Mt. Ngauruhoe - the bigger mountain that we didn't climb - but, judging from the windy and cloudy weather, he may have called that off.

We attempted to limber up before making the onward journey up country, following the fault line that runs diagonally through the North Island, connecting the three mountains in the national park - Tongariro, Ngauruhoe, Ruapehu - with the towns Taupo and Rotorua. Having visited Taupo a couple of days ago, we decided to stop on the way through to Rotorua for breakfast on the delightful lake shore. Dixie Browns provided an excellent "eggs benny" with mushrooms and spinach, which sadly left no room for their tempting rotating column of sweet treats.

*drools*

The fault line is the cause of many fascinating and spectacular natural phenomena along its course, from mountain ranges to pockets of geothermal activity that have broken the Earth's crust and left it with colourful and smouldering wounds.

Chasm

We stopped at one such gallery of geothermal activity, Wai-O-Tapu "Thermal Wonderland", where the landscape is marked by steaming craters, tiny wispy fumeroles, and lakes of water died green-yellow by the unusual mineral content.

Devil's bath

Many of these phenomena have a hellish monicker, such as the Devil's ink pots or Devil's bath. Oddly none of the features seems to be named Devil's bum, which would be more apt, given the sulfurous stench that pervades the place.

Hold your nose

The view over Lake Ngakoro gives over the cooling tower of Ohaaki power station, which generates electricity from the hydrothermal activity in the area. This provides 5% of NZ's power requirements, so it is no surprise, when coupled with the 15% hydroelectricity from the Waikato river, that the majority of the country's power comes from renewable energy.

Thermal Wonderland

Outside of the Thermal Wonderland is a mud pool, which looks as though it were the model for Labyrinth's 'bog of eternal stench'. Acid from deep underground rises to the surface here, dissolving rock and earth into a viscous clay-like mud. As the hot, acrid steam builds up pressure underneath the surface, it is released intermittently with a glopping sound and a spray of mud, much to the amusement of the onlookers, young and old.

Oh no, not the eternal stench!

Not far along the SH5, we came to Rotorua. After the obligatory Pak 'n Save stop for a few bits and pieces, we pulled up at Cosy Cottage campsite on the edge of Lake Rotorua. Dusk was upon us, so a walk to the lake shore was quickly aborted as the air was thick with biting little sandflies. Instead, we repaired to the safety of the van to eat a simple meal of fried rice and polish off a bottle of dessert wine between the four of us that we had picked up at Framingham's winery in Marlborough last week.