KIWI HOT SPRINGS
Forget the subterranean scent, you’ll soon be soaking in the curative waters
I sucked in a deep breath and smiled. That subterranean scent meant I would soon be soaking in curative hot springs, smothering my body in primeval goo and exploring a land of burping mud pots, prismatic pools, boiling rivers and shooting geysers.
The Rotorua region, one of the world’s most geothermally active areas, is the Southern Hemisphere’s take on Yellowstone — minus bison, bears and backed-up crowds. Gases and steam hiss out of everywhere: in pastures, in backyards, in the middle of the city’s huffing lakeside park, where visitors find free thermal foot baths and cautionary danger signs. Modern-day eruptions there have thrown football-size chunks of mud and rock many storeys high.
That volatility is, to borrow a Kiwi phrase, “a bit of a worry.” But locals who live on this thin crust of quakeprone, jerked-about earth with molten rock stirring beneath them remain unflappable. They’re used to a landscape constantly being made and remade by eruptive geological forces.
“It’s a new country,” one genial fellow reassured me with a shrug. “Things are going to happen.”
Boosters began pitching the healing properties of Rotorua’s hot, mineralrich springs and geothermal attractions in the 1880s, when they created the town as a tourist destination. In recent years, their descendants have upped the ante, casting the region as the adventure capital of the North Island: “New Zealand’s coolest hot spot.”
They’ve done their job well. Last year, an estimated 3.8 million visitors flocked here, Kiwis slightly outnumbering international visitors. When they’re not detoxifying in mineral water at a local spa, tramping through acres of geothermal oddities or learning about native Maori traditions at a cultural centre, tourists shell out dollars to raft Class 5 rapids, bungee
jump, parasail, “zorb” down hills in large plastic balls, go on fourwheel-drive bush safaris, ride zip lines, negotiate courses of high ropes and zip downhill on a little land luge.
Before any thrills, I needed to chill. As soon as we set down our bags, my jet-lagged friends and I beelined to the popular Polynesian Spa in downtown Rotorua. We arrived early and avoided busloads of chattering tourists with their telescoping selfie sticks. I put on my jandals (Kiwi for flip-flops), took off my jewelry (silver turns black in sulphuric water), stripped to my bathing suit and started hopping from pool to pool — our “adult” package (about $27.50 Cdn) included numerous mineral pools and no kids. As I steeped in 100-plusdegree Fahrenheit waters said to ease arthritic pain and promote ageless beauty, I slowly unwound, taking in the sweeping views of Lake Rotorua and the vapours trailing across it. This huge, water-filled volcanic caldera has, in recent years, spontaneously erupted in 60-foot (18-metre) geysers.
Rejuvenated and rested, I sat down to make a list of gotta-gos, sorting through brochures from the helpful i-SITE information centre downtown.
My first pick was the luge ride at a top-of-the-hill funtopia called Skyline Rotorua, with gondolas, zip lines, a sky swing, gnarly mountain-biking trails, fine dining and an on-site winery. I have a fondness for go-carts, and was a sucker for the tobogganlike luges — even though they had three wheels, not four, and felt a bit like an oversize plastic roller skate as I stuffed myself in. Within minutes, I turned into a grinning 6-year-old again, flying past braking slowpokes and screaming around corners on the paved tracks. Wheee! Five rides, with ski-lifts back uphill and a trip to and from the mountaintop in a gondola, cost about $54 Cdn.
The next outing was greener and serener. We ponied up about $135 each for a three-hour experience at Rotorua Canopy Tours with suspension bridges, zip lines and an eco-excursion to one of the island’s rare bits of virgin forest. It was exciting to fly 70 feet high between ancient trees, crisscrossing and competing for sunlight. Between flights, we bathed below in dense forest, listening to symphonies of birdsong — trilling melodies with throaty cackles and chuckles for a rhythm section. Our well-versed guides explained how native birds had been decimated in the country’s forests by introduced land mammals: rats, stoats, pigs, cats, opossums and other bad influences.
Even though it was almost two hours away, I had to see Waitomo and its famous network of underground caves. Dozens of operators run tours by foot and boat. We chose “cave tubing” with Tube It, about $135 each for a two-hour trip. We donned wet suits, helmets and headlamps, grabbed an inner tube and climbed down narrow, wooden steps into a mysterious black hole. Inside was a dripping otherworld of stalactites, craggy close walls and a blackwater stream. We waded into the dark water waist-high, then chest-high, turned off our headlamps and lay back on our tubes, which were pulled along by guides as we took in the sight above us: millions of glow-worms, hanging from tiny threads, shining like stars in the pitch dark.
Our gotta-go list included four geothermal parks. The youngest, 16 miles (26 km) south of Rotorua, was Waimangu Volcanic Valley, with an entry cost of about $35. The place was levelled by an apocalyptic volcanic eruption in 1886, but has come back to life with lush, hearty vegetation acclimated to the extreme thermal and acidic soil conditions. We took a slow, 1½-hour hike through steaming rivers, silica terraces, lakes and hillsides, savouring the wild beauty.
The most colourful park, WaiO-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, was a few miles down the road. (Entry cost about $30.) Manganese, iron, sulphur and salts have painted the place in yellows and reds, purples and greens. The stunning Champagne Pool, 165 F on the surface, was a vivid teal rimmed by a rusty orange, a colour linked to arsenic and antimony sulphides. I loved walking the boardwalks built atop mineral terraces, lost in clouds of drifting hot steam.
The closest geothermal park to downtown was Te Puia, which combines geological features with an introduction to native Maori culture. Our entry, which cost about $63, included a visit to workshops at the Maori Arts and Crafts Institute and a lively 45minute dance and music performance . The muscled, bare-chested male greeter, in a short kilt called a piupiu, rushed at us with a fierce face and a feathered spear, held aloft. Scary. In the best way.
I’d just learned about Ruaumoko, the powerful and restless Maori god trapped underground, who is said to rumble about and cause volcanic eruptions and earthquakes. I hoped he was in a good mood as we walked Te Puia’s trails, past boiling mud pots that spit up bloops of hot grey sludge like oatmeal on a too-high flame. The highlight was Pohutu Geyser, which regularly erupts almost 100 feet (30 m) high, spewing from an oozing mineral-stained terrace of fuming fissures.
The mud baths and sulphur pools at Hell’s Gate were a big attraction. This hyperactive geothermal reserve, 15 minutes by car from town, was named by writer George Bernard Shaw, who said that this must be the “gateway to hell” and dubbed one of its 200-degree-plus, superacidic pools “Sodom and Gomorrah.” A sign nearby warns: “People who throw litter or stones into the thermal pools may be asked to retrieve them.”
Wandering the grounds with an informative guide, we saw the clear, boiling pools the Maori used for cooking and a sulphuric waterfall where native warriors healed wounds and washed away the blood of battle. By midmorning, we had eased into the park’s milk-chocolate-coloured mud pools. The goo oozed between my toes, soft and silky. I started grabbing big gobs of it and covered myself and my friends until we were no longer recognizable. The mud cratered and cracked on my face as it dried.
Everywhere we went, we sampled hot springs. Our favourite was the rural Waikite Valley Thermal Pools, a 25-minute drive south of Rotorua. The place has a simple, natural feel. I loved the sign next to the help-yourself water pitcher that said: “No we don’t have Wi-Fi. Sorry. Talk to each other.” Entry was about $20 Cdn. No sulphur stink, and the setting was stunning. The pools looked out on a roly-poly landscape as green as a golf course. Below, clouds rose from a nearly 200 F stream fed by a spring that is the largest single source of natural, boiling geothermal water in the country.
After a quick soak, my friend and I hiked to see the spring. The short trail was shrouded in mist and outlined by big ferns. I felt as if I were walking back in time, into the age of the dinosaurs. When I reached the trail’s end, I could barely make out the boiling spring through the blur. Then, for an instant, everything cleared and my breath caught in my chest. That boiling water was rising, climbing one foot, two, more. Would it stop?
“Wow. Did you ...?” I asked my partner. She nodded. “Whoa.”
Even when the boil died down, and our vocabulary recovered, I was still rattled. There was only one cure: more hot water. I hurried back to the pools and went neck-deep, mmm-ing and sighing, looking out on all that vivid green clouded in steam. I began to melt again, a stranger in a stranger land, strangely content.