I woke up early in my car. I wanted to make sure I made it to the geyser at 10:15 because that's the time that they make it go off. I drove down to Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland and bought my ticket. I rushed over to the geyser to make it in time, and so did everyone else. I felt very much like a tourist. A park employee spoke for a little while about the geyser. He said that a prison is near by and back in the day, the prison put the inmates to work, developing the park and that they were actually the ones that discovered the geyser. They would bathe themselves and wash their clothes in the springs and on day, one of them dropped their bar of soap and it triggered the geyser to go off. So now to make the geyser go off at a certain time everyday, they put some sort of biodegrade soap in it, so it's actually not entirely natural.
After he spoke, we all patiently waited in the stadium like arena, with our cameras and phones out, all silently waiting for it to go off. It bubbled for awhile, we waited and waited. And them finally water shot up in the air. It was pretty neat, though the stream wasn't all that big. We were all taking pictures and videos and the geyser started to slowly die down. Within five or less minutes of it going off, everyone started to trickle out of the arena since the main event was over. It was a parade out of the parking lot and everyone headed for other features at the park. I went over to the bubbling mud pool. It was cool to see mud spewing and alive.
I made my way back to the visitors center and went from there into the park. I had a map of the 21 features in the park and began the walk. The first few were steaming craters in the earth, white and yellow in color. The next attraction was the champagne pool. It was a huge blue/green steamy pool with an orange rim around it. The colors were brilliant and it was probably my favorite spot in the park. I kept walking and came to other colorful thermal pools, mud formations, layered cliffs, and other natural wonders. One of the last spots was a bright green pool, like BRIGHT. It was hard to believe it was natural. (See pics (one I upload them)).
I heard from a few people that I should check out Kerosene Creek. I found it on google maps and started down a gravel road. This road turned into more of a 'rock road' and I was worried I'd pop a tire (or Kiwis calls them, tyres) and I was hoping the creek would be worth it. I made it to a car park where there were many other vehicles. I walked down towards the creek to see what it was all about. I walked along a trail and passed a small waterfall. I kept going and started to see more people laying in the creek and further up a bigger waterfall emptied into a pool where even more people were enjoying the water. It was quite the hang out for families and couples.
I thought okay, this is cool I am definitely going to go get my swimsuit on. I came back, prepared to get in the water. I climbed down to the big pool, GoPro in hand and tested the water. It was nice and warm, not hot, but comfortably warm. It wasn't very deep but kids were jumping off the falls into the pool below. I hung out, took pictures and enjoyed the waters. I left this spot and went to the creek up above to see if I could find a deep spot to lay in. I moved around to find a good seat and was kind of surprised how hard the water was running and I kind of had to brace myself. I laid in it for awhile and left after a few hours.
I changed back into clothes and headed for Crater Lakes on Rainbow Mountain. I walked less than 1k up to the lookout over a single Crater Lake. It was BRIGHT blue. The cliffs surrounding it were white and red. A lot of interesting natural formations of many different and vivid colors happening around here. It was getting a little bit late so I headed out and went south to Taupo. I looked up different holiday parks and then settled on one, it was called Taupo DeBretts and was park of a Hiltom Hotel. It had a big water park and thermal pools attached, but of course there was an extra fee to go into it.
I set up camp and headed to the kitchen to make dinner. I finally opened the bottle of wine that I bought days ago, mm mm mmmm :) I called Ryan and then sat down to eat. I hung out in the dining area / tv room / lounge for a bit then headed to my tent. It was a pretty good 24th birthday.
