New Zealand - Volcanic Area

From Wellington we had to make our way to Taupo, the centre of the North Island's volcanic area - a long trip, especially in our little campervan. The first half of the trip promised to be nothing special, but from then on it should become pretty amazing, with the motorway cutting straight through New Zealand's volcanic heartland.

Our time in Te Papa (see previous entry) had visualised clearly that New Zealand is on the cusp of two tectonic plates. As a result, the country experiences very regular earthquakes and shocks. Also, the earth's crust is at places very, very thin because of the plates sliding along, which leads to volcanic eruptions and all sorts of 'geothermal activities' (yes, we read the information carefully), such as geysers and boiling mud. In our next few days we were going to experience all of this upclose.

At least, that was our plan. As soon as we entered the 'volcanic heartland' it started to rain. Which meant that the volcanoes we were hoping to see, were covered in clouds. Moreover, when we checked the weather-forecast for the next few days, it looked like things would only get worse. Which was a bit of a problem, as we had planned to do a one-day hike over two volcanoes followed the next day by a revitalising soak in some hot springs. Neither of these turned out to be feasible. (We later read in the newspaper than this rain/storm was the worst this area of New Zealand had experienced in 150 years!)

But, what is a plan without a backup, so we had some alternative arrangements:
- We spent a wet but fascinating half-day in Wai-o-tapu geothermal valley, where in a very small area the earth shows all its thermal tricks: boiling pools of mud, pools of water that are coloured bright blue, green or orange because of all the dissolved elements and a geyser that reaches about five meters high. Neither of us had seen these phenomena 'in real life', and it was very, very impressive.
- We spent a half-day (when the weather hadn't turned yet) walking along a river gorge with some massive 'rapids' (for the 'white-water' fanatics - about 5 meters high) and hot springs as contributaries and
- We spent time on the Internet (what would we do without the Internet) and in the cinema (to feed our need for some entertainment from 'back home' we saw the Queen together with a slightly geriatric cross-section of New Zealand, but a very good and insightful movie and Mr Bean together with a slightly adolescent cross-section of New Zealand, but a very average and slightly boring movie).

With the weather supposedly turning for the better, we set off to the coast.....