Today we headed to the Thermal lava pools and so we rolled into Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, just driving in its the kind of place that screams
“Mother Nature’s had enough of everyone’s nonsense”. Some parts look like the entrance to Mordor and the smell is like someone’s PE kit.
A massive yellow-rimmed pit is the Frying Pan Flat collapse crater, formed when the acidic geothermal ground underneath basically dissolved and caved in.
The Champagne Pool The signature Rotorua stinker. Biggest hot spring in NZ. 65 metres across. 74 degrees at the top and hotter below.
The orange rim is arsenic-sulphide mineral deposits. The bubbles are pure CO₂.
The smell is sulphur, which the Georgia lovingly described as “massive farts”.
The Devil’s Bath…
That nuclear waste looking green pool is perfectly natural. The colour comes from suspended sulphur and ferrous salts, it’s Shrek’s bathtub.
🌋 Lady Knox Geyser blowing her load for an audience At 10am sharp, she fired off like a shaken Coke bottle but naturally erupts every 24–72 hours however the park gives her a little help using biodegradable surfactant (soap) which breaks the surface tension and triggers her to erupt on cue.
While me and the girls sensibly said “nah, we’ve walked enough volcanic danger zones”,
Ali marched off and did the 1 hour 30 circuit like she was training for the Rotorua Marathon.
She smashed it. Give her a medal. Or at least a veggie sausage roll, photo to prove it.
Later that day we went to Wonder world Rotorua, has a big 3D maze with the coloured corners you’ve got to find.
We had a race to see who would win, a rematch I guess, this time we were just as confused but finally dotty and I won, the magic of a maze on this scale is the disorientation, bickering, and victory pics.
Georgia climbed, explored, chased QR codes, and used up enough energy to guarantee a quiet car ride home for once.
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