Today we begin by visiting waiotapu. Our hotel was situated right next to the Pohutu Geyser, but we decided to go to waiotapu to see the "Lady Knox" Geyser. We did 3 things today, visited Waiotapu, then Waimangu - Volcanic and Thermal Valley and spent the evening at a hot spa in the Waikite valley.
Waiotapu
Believe it or not, this geyser erupts everyday at 10:15 AM for about an hour(how does it keep track of the time???). We were late and there was a mad dash to try and get here by 10:15 and in the process we took a wrong turn and got lost in some back country roads, though not for very long. We reached the Lady Knox geyser about 20 mins late, but it was still playing. I must say I was disapppointed, I was expecting to see this huge water and sound show, that was going to end the world as we know it. What I saw was a defunct single outlet fountain.
The park has a 3 km walking track, that covers the attractions in the park. For some reason we expected everything to be larger than life, but still it is an interesting place. You can see crude oil bubbling to the surface, large pits caused by the corrosive heat and chemicals from inside the earth's crust and you can feel the heat even though you are at a safe distance. You also get to see a wide variety of colours on display.
The best colour display is at the champagne pool and the artists pallete. These 2 features contain very bright colours in the water due to whatever minerals they contain. The Champagne Pool is bright orange in colour on the sides due to arsenic, magnesium, gold etc. The water in that pool was about 75 Centrigade hot, and covers a volcanic crater from the past. There was a decent breeze and a whole lot of steam at the champagne pool, at times we couldnt see the pool in all the steam. The water I believe is the colour of Champagne and it is bubbling all the time due to the carbon-di-oxide travelling to the top of the hot spring. If you watch closely, you can see all these orange coloured particles drifting to the edge.
There are yellow mounds where sulphur has accumulated over the years. Would be a good place to teach kids Chemistry, they would pick up stuff just like that, because they can see stuff in action. As you walk through this area, you are visually treated to all these different colours and it actually is quite interesting.
At the farthest end from the visitor center of the walk is green coloured Lake Ngakoro, this is the end point of the walk and you got to trace your way back to the entrance. Along the way to Lake Ngakoro, are the Frying Pan Flat, it is called so because, well it is as flat as a frying pan, no undulations, not slopes nothing, these are just flat. You got to see it to make sense of it.
At the end of the walk are 2 features, the Birds Nest Crater and the Devil's bath. The Bird's Nest Crater is so called, because birds have made nests in this crater and the heat from the crater is actually used by the birds to incubate their eggs, using renewable and green energy sources, I guess. I dont have a snap of the Birds Nest Crater, but then it looks like all the other craters that you have seen before. The Devil's bath, has this weird colour. The water in this crater is actually all the water that overflows from the champagne pool, it mixes with the salts in the ground and obtains this colour, and depending on the cloud cover and the amount of light, the colour varies from green to yellow. Looks like this place has all the colours in the spectrum captured here.
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