The next day after hiking Hail Mountain we decided to do something nice and easy. We were in the Taupo Volcanic Zone and the area is literally covered with collapsed craters, cold and boiling pools of mid, water and steaming fumaroles (whatever they are).
The scenic reserve has been created because beneath the ground is a system of streams headed by magma left over from eruptions, The water is so hot that it absorbs minerals from rocks and passes them off as steam.
Eventually they get absorbed into the ground making it look like a nuclear meltdown. But the colours are all natural and due to different mineral elements, in the pictures below you will mostly see:
yellow sulphur
white silica
red/brown iron oxide
green colloidal sulphur/ferrous salts
Oh I forgot one important thing: it stinks like rotten eggs. The whole region stinks. It smells like they are having an egg salad sandwich convention.
You do get used to it until you walk by a steaming pool of stinky water and you can barely breathe. Kelley came with us but half-way through the walk we wondered if it was okay for the baby.
The scenic reserve has been created because beneath the ground is a system of streams headed by magma left over from eruptions, The water is so hot that it absorbs minerals from rocks and passes them off as steam.
Eventually they get absorbed into the ground making it look like a nuclear meltdown. But the colours are all natural and due to different mineral elements, in the pictures below you will mostly see:
yellow sulphur
white silica
red/brown iron oxide
green colloidal sulphur/ferrous salts
Oh I forgot one important thing: it stinks like rotten eggs. The whole region stinks. It smells like they are having an egg salad sandwich convention.
You do get used to it until you walk by a steaming pool of stinky water and you can barely breathe. Kelley came with us but half-way through the walk we wondered if it was okay for the baby.
It was very nice at first, we all went to Lady Knox Geyser, I suppose like Old Faithful but much smaller. The story is that years ago there were prisoners working nearby and they discovered a hot pool of water and decided that it would be great to wash their clothes in because they wouldn't have to go to the trouble of boiling water. Everything was fine until they added the soap - that's how the geyser reacts. No one had ever seen such a thing before and Lady Knox came to visit to see for herself- from then on it was called Lady Knox Geyser.
Next we went to the boiling mud pools. I had seen them before in pictures and I was looking forward to it. Unfortunately you don't get the benefit of sound but it reminded of The Neverending Story when the Nothing was after them and ate Atreyu's Horse. So sad.
There were over 25 areas to view and Jacob wanted me to take pictures of all of it. But I'll spare you and just post a few.
The Artist's Palette which is a bunch of hot and cold pools that are steaming and hissing - oh and stinking. But the variety and vibrance of the colours was amazing.
This was unbearable, the stinky hot rotten sulphur egg smell blowing in your face.
Again a tough picture, the wind kept changing and blowing it into our face instead of behind us. This was a quick one.
2 comments:
What's going on here....do Kelly and Jacob work???
Yes they work. This was actually from the weekend and I'm just catching up on things. If you can believe it I went hiking on Saturday, went here saturday morning, went Zorbing and flying Sunday afternoon and then Sunday night went to a Maori dinner (which I'll post today) before driving 4 hours back to Auckland. A very busy weekend.
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