travels with janne

Our next little adventure was a day spent in Tongariro National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. There is an abudance of volcanic activity in this area, the latest major eruption being in 1995 right in the middle of skiing season. Fortunately, the volcano erupted in the middle of the night so no one was on the slopes, but eruptions that destroy buildings, ski lifts and railways do occur with alarming frequency.

Mount Ngauruhoe is a beautiful, cone-shaped mountain with snow glazing its slopes like ice cream running down an ice cream cone. The mountain looks just like a volcano is supposed to look. Its next-door neighbour, Mount Ruapehu, is completely snow-covered and is a popular ski area.

We are incredibly lucky with the weather: it is sunny and warm and the skies are very clear – so clear, in fact, that we were able to see the 2518 metres high Mount Taranaki about 150 kilometres away. The clear skies and the holey ozone layer are also two reasons that I am pretty pink in the face and have started to smother myself in high-factor sun block.

The combination of snow on the mountains and fiery lava within them is fascinating. I would love to see a volcano in action, but what we saw today was pretty good, too. We did several walks of various lengths and with quite variable nature. Altogether we hiked about 12 kilometres up and down mountain slopes, through lush green forests, and past busy brooks, rushing streams and plunging waterfalls. We have had great views of the snow-covered volcanic mountains and seen lots of nifty plants, lichen and mosses.

There is just a thin layer of crusty earth between me and the workings of the earth. A huge area of North Island is a wide belt of geothermal activity with boiling and bubbling mud and water and lots of stinky steam escaping here, there and everywhere. Today, we visited Wai-O-Tapu, a huge geothermal area south of Rotorura and north of Turangi.

Such an amazing and weird landscape!. It bubbles, it boils, it smells, it steams. Geysers gush and mud roils like a huge cup of hot chocolate in which the milk has gone off. Bacteria and mineral deposits create amazing colour displays of rusty red, emerald green, murky green, sulphur yellow, and turquoise. The mud, stones and water contain gold, arsenic, mercury, antimony, iron and sulphur, so it is a veritable hot pot of alchemy, poison and valuable minerals.

We also watched a geyser go off at its appointed time thanks to the park ranger pouring soap into the chimney to alter the surface tension of the water.

After the geothermal area we drove past Lake Taupo, New Zealand’s largest lake, which gave great views of Mt. Tongariro and Mt. Ngauruhoe. In the foreground were flowering yellow lupines and gorse.

Speaking of snow and flowers, it seems so incongruous to be seeing lupines, gorse, cherry trees, roses and rhododendrons in full bloom at the same time as advertisements for Christmas bargains and shop windows displaying snowy landscapes with Santa Claus and sleigh bells.