From sulfur to wine
NEW ZEALAND | Thursday, 11 March 2010 | Views [600]
3/11/2010 6:44 PM
Right now we’re relaxing at our hostel in Napier, but I still have to fill in what we did yesterday in Rotorua.
We started the day reasonably early, getting to the Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland around 9:30am. The geyser erupts daily at 10:15am, so we wanted to make sure to get that in. The whole drive up Jess and I kept talking about how amazing it was that this geyser is so well timed … EVERY day at 10:15am. Wow – does it account for daylight savings? Or do they just print new brochures in the winter time?? We’d soon find out, that while this is a real geyser and it would normally erupt on its own every 48-72 hours, the park sprinkles a bit of some soapy substance into it every day at 10:15 so that everybody can have a look at the amazing geyser. Quite nice of them, but it sort of ruins the whole “awesome nature” experience. Oh well. It was still neat to see water shoot out of the ground to about 15m or so.
While waiting for the geyser, we checked out the mud pools. Those were pretty intense. It was a “pond” of sorts, with huge mud banks and mud bars throughout. The mud would be bubbling the whole time, and every once in a while, mud would shoot up anywhere from 6” to a couple feet. That was a really cool experience b/c I’ve never even heard of something like that --- seems right out of a movie or foreign planet. The worst part though was the smell. It smelled like rotting bacon mixed with sulfur. Steam was rising out of the mud pools, and every once in a while a cloud would roll by … lame. In fact, the whole park smelled like that. After the geyser and mud pools, we spent about 75 minutes walking past wicked sulfur pools and sulfur vents. They were various colors (red, purple, yellow green, white), and looked really neat (again, like some foreign planet’s landscape), but again … that horrid smell of sulfur would roll by in a cloud. We actually started getting quite nauseous after a while, so we decided to leave. We had seen the whole park by that point, but even if we hadn’t, we couldn’t handle any more. Plus, we were getting late for our next awesome adventure … mud pool dip with a sulfur bath – ha, no joke.
Hells Gate is another thermal park that has a separate “spa” area for bathing in the mud and sulfur pools. We didn’t realize what we were getting ourselves into when we signed up, and we almost bailed after our experience at the “wonderland,” but we figured what the heck; we’re here so we may as well do it. It actually turned out to be pretty neat. We got to sit in a mud “tub” and plaster our arms and faces with the mud. They were even nice enough to take our picture, covered in mud. After that, we had an extremely cold shower and then dipped in the sulfur bath. The bath wasn’t as intense smelling as the rest of the park (or what we experienced at the “wonderland”); in fact, it was actually quite nice. Though, you could definitely detect a bit of sulfur. Or perhaps it reeked of sulfur and we were just so numb to the smell at that point? Oh well … it’s good for your skin at least. ;)
We didn’t spend too much time at the rest of the park. It was similar to Waiotapu, and we were sick of smelling the gas, so we just went to the wood carving tent, carved us some cool designs into a piece of wood, checked out the hot water falls, and then jetted out of there. The hot water falls were actually kinda neat. The Maori considered the hot water falls (and the nearby sulfur lake) very sacred. They would use it for medicinal purposes, baptize newborn males in it, and use it after battle to heal their wounds and wash away all the “tapu” of war (or something). Quite neat. The waterfall itself was more of a water stream that ran down some rocks, but knowing the history behind it made it cool. We didn’t make it to the sulfur lake, but I’m sure our lives are complete w/o seeing that. No one is allowed to bath in the lake these days (they do, however, pump the water from there into the sulfur bath we took earlier), but the Maori still use it occasionally. Supposedly it heals most skin ailments and even helps alleviate arthritis.
Anyway, we made our way back to town to get ready for the Maori dinner. The bus picked us up at 6pm, and we got there around 6:30. The whole way, our bus driver was telling us Maori words we could use later, and then we picked a “chief.” I guess the intent of this night is to actually recreate what it would be like if we (the bus passengers) were an actual Maori tribe, visiting another Maori tribe for the first time. We needed a chief because that chief would participate in some “greeting” that involved the other tribe challenging our chiefs, waiving sticks around, making their eyes big and sticking out their tongues (“mimic wild animals” they said), and doing a bunch of other really crazy tribal stuff. That part of the night was quite different than anything we’d ever experienced. Definitely no luau, ha, but it was a lot of fun watching it all play out. Then we walked through a traditional Maori village, got introduced to some games and culture, and then watched the tribe perform song and dance routines of their history, etc. (much more like a luau). FINALLY we got to the dinner part – dang we were hungry. They had chicken, lamb, fish, two kinds of potatoes, carrots, bread, macaroni salad … my plate was overflowing by the end of the buffet table. Pretty tasty too. We sat at a table with about 20 other people, but we happened to sit right across from an older couple from northern Ontario. We made quick friends with them once we matched up our shared Canadian heritage … and they were quite taken aback by our “story” and why we were travelling, and then they bought us a bottle of wine to share. So nice – gotta love Canadians. By the end of the night we were fat and happy, and that made for a solid sleep.
Our plan for the next day (today) was to originally check out Tongariro and do the alpine crossing. It has been consistently rated by hiking magazines as one of the top ten best day hikes in the world. And everybody that does it loves it, and most people say it was a “life changing experience.” It was also where Lord of the Rings was mainly filmed. Not that we cared much for the latter, but the rest of it was a huge pull on us to do this trek. But after looking into it, we decided against it. The hike would be a solid 7-8 hours (average time without stopping is 5-6 hours). The weather forecast was “good,” but you had to call at 6:30am the morning of to make sure they were still on. I guess there was a troublesome cloud formation rolling in. Anyway, the bus left at 7am, and it was an hour away. So that meant, we’d have to get up really early, drive really far, and then perhaps turn back. This would also require a lot of packing lunches, etc. the night before. All of that would have been worth it … except, when I looked at pictures, it literally looked like we’d be walking past rocks and boulders (and a couple “cool” lakes) for 7 hours. Meh. I’d be down to do it just for the experience, and perhaps if we were going to be in NZ longer it would have been worth it, but I wasn’t so sold on it that I wanted to convince Jess it’d be worth it. And neither of us were really sold on the idea of walking through a rocky, dusty landscape for 7 hours.
Instead, we canceled the following night’s stay in Rotorua, and booked an earlier night’s stay at our hostel in Napier. This would allow us to have a leisurely morning (quite the nice break from our usual rushing out the door), and leisurely drive to Napier, and then a leisurely day doing … whatever. Nice. And that’s exactly what we’ve done so far.
We left Rotorua around 10:30, and got into Napier around 2pm. The hostel is water front (100m away?), and is pretty much par for the YHA course. We had a nice lunch nearby and then checked out a cool wine store. They sell hundreds of boutique wines from all over the world (and region … Napier / Hawkes Bay is the oldest wine region in NZ), and we were even allowed to taste four different kinds. Quite good. One of the wines, in fact, was too good not to buy. Afterward, we checked out an iSite to plan our two days here. Tomorrow, we’re hoping to have a beach morning, and then do an afternoon winery tour. The next day, we’re planning on a morning with the gannets tour, and then most likely we’ll head on our way towards Wellington by the afternoon. Not too sure if we’ll make it to Wellington … but we’ll figure that out soon enough.
For now, we’re just enjoying this slow day, and will probably cook up some shrimp pasta in a few minutes. Oh, and we gotta get this stuff booked before it’s too late.
