Mudding in Rotorua

 

This is a round-up of three geothermal sites to visit in Rotorua: Wai-O-Tapu, Hells Gate, Whakarewarewa Village.

Wai-o-Tapu and a 'man-made' geyser. 

 This thermal area is located 27kms south of Rotorua, 201 Waiotapu Loop Road, Rotorua 3073. It is billed as being spectacularly colourful but the colours were decidedly muted on the day I visited. Maybe the heavily overcast sky had something to do with that. The most interesting thing there, apart from walking through bush to get there, is the Lady Knox Geyser - a tourism confection.

It is named after Lady Constance Knox, the second daughter of Uchter Knox, 15th Governor of New Zealand. The geyser is induced to erupt daily at 10:15 am by dropping a surfactant into the opening of the vent.

 It's all rather artificial as we sit there waiting for the geyser to be deliberately 'turned on'. In fact it seemed a bit sad, really, that commercialism of nature has gone to such lengths as to promote something that doesn't naturally occur in nature, with hordes of tourists paying to watch a science experiment. That wasn't what I had expected. It didn't start life as a geyser as such but over a hundred years of being forced to start fuming, the mineral salts have built up and created a cone, giving a spooky geyser appearance.

In 1901, the first open prison in New Zealand was established at Waiotapu, designed to accommodate some of the better-behaved prisoners from around the jails of the District.

A gang of those prisoners first discovered the 'geyser' in a clearing and found that when they first added soap to the hot water to wash their clothes in a spring, they could make the spring erupt. Voila, a completely tame geyser that doesn't last all that long.

Next on the list of things to do was Hell's Gate. Again, on an overcast day and with the vagaries of nature, I found it under-whelming. First up, like several activities at Rotorua when I was there, the schedules were not accurate and so I discovered I had missed the guided tour. Oh well, I trotted around by myself learning all I was going to learn from an info panel.

This information panel gave useful information but really, most of the pools looked much the same and mostly uninteresting grey sludgey rock. Thermal activity seemed low so I decided to try a mud bath. They say the volcanic minerals in it are good for the skin. I slathered it on myself and waited 30 minutes as prescribed, then rinsed off and headed for a warm water pool to soak in. All well and good but not really different to the thermal pools at Hanmer Springs, North Canterbury. That Rotorua mud though is really sticky and gets in EVERYWHERE. It took me several attempts back home at washing my swimming costume to get it free from the mud and associated sulphur smell. My skin might be too old now to benefit - I didn't notice any positive difference.

Mudding aside, I thought my international visitor might like to learn a bit about Maori culture so we headed over to the Maori village on offer. 

Whakarewarewa is a living village in that Maori residents live on site so opening and closing times are strict and need to be respected. I checked out the displays in the main building. Again, some useful info but glaring English mistakes on the info panels really detracted from it. They don't care (especially when you notice it) and didn't bother to get an English expert to spell-check the grammar - this in a country where most inhabitants and tourists could expect educational panels to have correct English on a museum panel. 

Our guide was delightful and willing to find out answers if she couldn't answer our questions 'off the bat'.

She did a great job taking us around. I asked her why, in a Maori village, the houses were all in European Colonial style as I hadn't expected that. She was reluctant to reply and suggested I speak with the senior guides about it. I'm respectful but curious. 

I think the elder guides understood that and explained that the original style of accommodation used by Maori villagers were just temporary lean-tos for sleeping in at night, nothing more. Not very warm or comfortable in winter so modern conveniences are preferred, especially electricity.

I was surprised to learn that the residents are quite comfortable wandering around naked whenever they want to take an outdoor bath in their communal area. No wonder there are no after-hours visits and naturally cooking is done in the cooking hot pools. The pools are at various temperatures so that people and food don't end up cooked together.

 I enjoyed the visit for the most part but it was disappointing that, despite advertising it, there was no cultural show on offer that day, no reason given, so my international guest who was only staying one night in Rotorua, missed out, despite our planning.

I think overall Rotorua is worth a visit, even if you are not lugeing etc but skip Hells Gate if you are concerned you might not have a guided tour. A visit isn't cheap and there's not a lot of interest to see.