A Land of Thermal Wonders

Friday morning we left the hotel to make our way to Wai-o-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, which to be honest, I only knew had a geyser and that was it. Turns out, it was a whole park dedicated to the natural hot pools formed by the volcanic activity prevalent in the area. One of the largest volcanic eruptions in the country was in Taupō, not far from here, and where we would later have lunch.

The paths we walked took us through some surreal landscapes. The weather was overcast, which at this point I was extremely happy for, but also added to the alien world feel—craggy rocks, steaming vents, strange smells, colours you wouldn’t expect.

A lot of the photos didn’t do it justice, but a few videos I grabbed helped show the kind of place we were in.

We had strict orders to be back at the visitor’s centre by ten, because they have a geyser that goes off every day at 10:15. It’s not Old Faithful (which I’ve never seen), and only goes off once every 24 hours. It was first discovered when local Māori accidentally set it off with the natural soap they were using to clean their clothes. So to this day, they induce its eruption, so everyone gets a chance to see it, and to keep it regular.

The Lady Knox geyser at Wai-o-Tapu, with our guide singing a traditional Māori song off screen. The original video was longer, but I cut out the parts on either end so it wouldn’t be quite so long.

Our explosive ending wrapped up, we left the park and made our way to Lake for a quick view and lunch. Sizes are hard to fully understand, but apparently you could drop Singapore in the middle and still have room to boat around.

From Taupō we headed north back towards Auckland with a stop in Hamilton about halfway back. It recently became the 4th largest city in New Zealand, but one of its claims to fame is their gardens. The Hamilton Gardens aren’t like most where it’s one very large garden of a single type. It’s more like it’s a outdoor museum of gardens throughout human history.

It was broken into different sections—Paradise, Fantasy, and Production—and each section had multiple examples from history within. We started in the Paradise section, which was meant to represent the perfect garden. If you’ve ever been to a Japanese Garden, or a Chinese Garden, that’s what you’d find in this section, only much smaller. They also had a classic Renaissance, and English Garden. All lovely, and what you’d expect.

The Production section was representative of actual working gardens, from English manor food gardens, to herb gardens, to a really lovely sustainable perma​culture garden that I would love to have. Also, what you’d expect to see.

The Fantasy section was where they kept all the wacky gardens that were meant to make you think, or at least go “huh”. They had a couple out of literature, but the only one I took pictures of was the Lewis Carroll inspired one.

The “arms” on the hedges would occasionally move. Because of course they would.

That more or less wrapped up our time together. It was still a couple of hours back to Auckland, but we were all tired from a very busy couple of days. We actually made friends with the couple from LA, so it was a bit bittersweet that things were ending.

That said, once we checked back into our hotel and dropped off our bags, we did meet up with that couple for dinner and made plans to see a Māori instructional “performance” the next day before they flew out.