Mud baths have big appeal
With limited funds and time, I was barely going to scratch the surface.
My first pick was the luge ride at an over-the-top, top-of-the-hill funtopia called Skyline Rotorua, with gondolas, zip lines, a sky swing, gnarly mountainbiking trails, fine dining and an on-site winery. I have a fondness for go-carts, and was a sucker for the toboggan-like luges — even though they had three wheels, not four, and felt a bit like an oversized 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. A small price to be a kid again.
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 21 metres high between ancient trees, looking down on giant ferns that reached skyward, 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. A percentage of our tour fees helped fund a program to trap on-site predators.
Even though it was almost two hours away, I had to see Waitomo and its famous network of ancient underground caves. Dozens of operators run tours by foot and boat. You can even rappel into the caves. 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 other world of stalactites, craggy close walls and a blackwater stream. We waded into the dark water waisthigh, 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. It was like being thrown floating into the universe.
Our gotta-go list included four geothermal parks. The youngest, 26 kilometres 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 hike through the steaming rivers, silica terraces, lakes and hillsides, savouring the weird and wild beauty.
The most colourful park, Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, was a few kilometres 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 degrees 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 45-minute Maori dance and music performance with a welcoming ceremony. 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.
I’d just learned about Ruaumoko, the powerful and restless Maori god trapped underground (and none too happy about it), 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 toohigh flame. The highlight was Pohutu Geyser, which regularly erupts almost 30-metres high, spewing from an oozing mineral-stained terrace of fuming fissures. They all seemed, in my overheated imagination, ready to blow at any instant.
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-plus-degree, super-acidic 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 were first to arrive and had him to ourselves — we saw the clear, boiling pools that 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. When I rinsed off, my cheeks felt oddly sleek and smooth, as if I were wearing someone else’s skin. The cost of the tour, mud bath and sulphur soaking pools, was about $82.
Everywhere we went, we sampled hot springs. We liked the Blue Baths in downtown Rotorua, housed in a handsome 1930s’ art deco building, with an entry cost of about $10. The warm waters of the big mineral pool were like velvet. We had the place almost all to ourselves, and we discovered a brilliant piano player on the afternoon shift upstairs in the tea room.
Our favourite spot, though, was the rural Waikite Valley Thermal Pools, a 25-minute drive south of Rotorua, far enough to discourage bus clumps of tourists. The place has a simple, natural feel, with local newspapers advertising fertilizer sprayers, service bulls, diggers, bulldozers and numbered ear tags. 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 modest, about $16. There was no sulphur stink, and the setting was stunning. The multiple pools looked out on a roly-poly landscape as green as a golf course. Below, clouds rose from a nearly 200-degree 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, which also feeds the thermal pools. 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 for my geothermal jitters: More hot water. I hurried back to the mineral pools, slipped out of my jandals and went neck-deep, mmm-ing and sighing, looking out on all that vivid green clouded in steam. Slowly, I began to melt again, a stranger in a stranger land, strangely content.
“Cave tubing” transports you to a dripping other world of stalactites and blackwater stream