After spending a while mopping up the unexpected puddle in the kitchen, Francis made a huge stack of gluten free pancakes. We all gathered around the kitchen table and ate heartily. We weren’t well-rested, but at least we were well-fed!
I had a little time to wander and snap photos, then we hauled gear down the steps to the riverbank. We were the last group out of the campsite again – perhaps because most of the campers ate a cold breakfast, or none.
We had lots of flat rowing, and then an incredibly windy area on top of the flat where we were blown upstream if we didn’t row. We had to row hard, then take breaks in the lee of the rocks on the riverbank, or just drift into the shallow water and plant an oar in the muck. Good thing we had plenty of practice!
We were grateful for every rest break!
And, of course, we enjoyed the lush environment, even in our zombified state. Here’s a video of the walk down from the break area back to the boats:
And another video much farther down the river, when it widened out considerably:
We also hit some awesome rapids – three long ones – and rowed like hell through all of them.
Just after the last one, we saw the boat ramp ahead of us, with the transport van already parked on the connecting road. Houses were scattered across the hillside, complete with power lines and driveways. We were back in the real world. Boo! We drifted over to the ramp and stumbled out, grinning and stretching and yawning, and talked excitedly about the experience.
“Super awesome,” I said. “I only wish it was longer, so we could use our skills now that we’ve developed them. I think it took an entire day for me to learn how to steer the boat without slowing it down.”
“Yeah,” Kerry said, “and the rapids were really stressful at first. It got a lot better when we learned how to communicate.”
I nodded vigorously. “For sure. There were some pretty tense moments. And we couldn’t really pull the canoe over and talk. Most of the time there was no place to pull over!”
Kerry turned to Francis, who was trying ropes down over the trailer. “Do a lot of couples get into arguments in the canoes?”
“Yeah, uh…” He looked across at his manager, standing by the door to the van. “We sometimes call them ‘divorce boats’.”
We laughed pretty hard at that.
The shuttle driver plowed along the steep gravelly roads with obvious impatience, forcing us to grip our seatbelts to avoid smacking into each other, but we still managed to pass around phones and cameras and show off pictures gathered from the trip. Sebastian and I exchanged contact information so we could trade photos later. We also devoured the few remaining snacks from the dry barrels, though I ate lightly to keep my stomach from rebelling. Looking back, Kerry and I agreed that this was the highlight of the trip so far, eclipsing even Hobbiton and the Waiotapu thermal park. New Zealand just keeps impressing us!
Back in National Park, we collected our bicycles from the garage and found that some critters has been investigating them:
Cat prints all over the recumbent seat after storing it in the Adrift NZ garage during the canoe trip!
Then we changed our hotel reservation to a different room, since the smaller one was tiny and had shared bathrooms. Dragged our gear inside and exploded it all over the floors and couches, then did a bunch of laundry, showered, and rode over to the restaurant where we stuffed ourselves.
Good thing we have a day off tomorrow! We would totally fail the Tongariro Crossing in our current state…
We got up early – no point in trying to sleep longer – and helped Francis get the gear packed and loaded. Then we lingered over breakfast, so our group was among the last to leave. Kerry and I were moving slowly, fighting sleep deprivation.
I couldn’t help wandering around with the camera a bit before we took to the river. Every square foot of land was a cauldron, a wrestling ring, a fireworks show of plant life. Trees and moss and parasitic vines, roots and shoots, fighting tooth and nail. I imagined that if I could see this terrain in fast-forward, with each hour compressed into a second, it would be literally writhing – and if I stood still, watching it that way, I would soon be covered in branches and sucked into the ground.
Shoooop! I think it would make a sound like crinkling paper, and in the last moments, it would be quite painful. Hungry plants…
Some of these plants – like the ones pictured above – grow up and through the trees, eventually climbing over and smothering them.
Others – like the ones pictured below – start as drifting seeds, landing on the tops of trees and taking root directly in the bark, going through an entire life cycle without actually reaching the ground.
That’s the sort of strategy you can evolve when you’re a plant in a forest that’s been extremely dense for eons, with no grazing animals to thin it out and shift the advantage towards grass.
This reminds me of the lichen I see back home on the oak trees.
Wikipedia: "Lichen is a composite organism that emerges from algae or cyanobacteria (or both) living among filaments of a fungus in a mutually beneficial (symbiotic) relationship."
Lichen is a composite organism, made from algae or cyanobacteria – or both – living among filaments of a fungus in a symbiotic relationship. Believe it or not, lichen is not actually parasitic, like the plants I described earlier. Lichens don’t put roots down into the trees they perch on, they just anchor to the surface, using them to gain altitude and better access to sunlight for photosynthesis, as well as better access to minerals filtering down in mist or rainwater, from decay happening downwind or farther up in the tree.
The most fascinating thing about lichens, from my point of view, is that they behave like a single organism but they do not actually have any traceable genetic lineage, because the bacteria and fungus that compose them can intermix with other bacteria and fungus on their own terms. So, every lichen everywhere is a hybrid.
Anyway, enough poking around. Time to get back on the river! Here’s a little video of Francis, Katerina, and Sebastian, rowing along.
We went through lots of little rapids today. They were fun, but Kerry and I were both very tired and had trouble communicating our intentions with the oars. I was seated in back, so it was my job to steer, but I also needed to tell Kerry which side to row on and how intensely to row, based on a strategy for passing through each of the rapids. Sometimes I couldn’t come up with a strategy in time so I didn’t know what to tell her. Other times she disagreed with my idea and rowed whichever way made sense to her, trying to steer us from the front. We had a few tense silences, until eventually we worked out a pattern: I would warn her far in advance what the plan was, and give her a number between 1 and 5 for how intensely to row.
“Okay, right side for this one. We’re gonna aim straight for the middle of that wave, then pitch out to the left. Gimme a 2 to start with…”
After sailing through a particularly devious sequence of rocks, waves, and upwellings, Francis drifted up to us and said, “hey, good job working that out. That’s one of the biggest rapids on this part of the river, and most people just stop rowing halfway through it because it’s like being on a bucking bronco. You guys kept rowing the whole way through. I’m impressed!”
Kerry and I felt a little better about our skills after that!
At the next rest stop we had more chocolate, cheese, fruit, veggies, and sandwiches. Kerry flopped down onto the shore and barely moved. I wandered up and down our little elbow of land, trying to get some heat into my feet, which had been cold ever since we stepped in the river to launch the canoes in the morning.
We saw a big jet-boat go roaring up the river, stirring up long rows of waves that slapped against the cliffs. I was surprised the Department Of Conservation allowed it, but Francis explained that the boat was essential for rescue operations and moving large amounts of gear.
“Many years ago, there were a lot more boats on this river, including a steam-based paddleboat service that ran for 70 years,” he said. “We’ll be passing one of the old mooring stations tomorrow and I’ll point it out.”
“Why did the service stop?” I asked.
“Well, eventually the railroad extended to the southern coast, and the ferry service got out-competed. So they decommissioned the ferry boat, and it sat parked on the river for years getting older and older until it just sank.”
“And that was it? No more boats?”
“Oh no, plenty of boats still. Just not that big. For a while there were lumber companies moving cargo on the river. Then there were raft races, and jet boat races, but those stopped in the 1980’s. Then about 15 years ago, some people got together with some money and raised the original riverboat up, restored it so it looks great again, and started up a little bit of the original ferry service as a tourist attraction.”
“Wow! Pretty cool!”
“Yeah. And couple years ago, another riverboat service started with a newer, smaller boat, and you can take rides on that too, pretty far up the river. But personally, I think canoeing is a much better way to go. Of course.”
“Of course!”
We loaded into the canoes and paddled for another couple hours, moving through easy rapids, chatting with each other, staring curiously into the shadowy channels that snaked into the cliffs on either side, and having a good time. I promised myself I would come back with a kayak at some point, and explore some of those channels — but there’s so much more to explore I doubt I’ll keep that promise.
Eventually we zig-zagged into a tributary of the river, and tied the canoes up near a trail that was the side-entrance to the “Bridge To Nowhere” hiking area. The ascent was treacherous and muddy, and we had to cling to knotted ropes for some of it. Whoo!
As we walked the main trail, Francis told us about how the earlier settlers managed to drive cattle here, trying to get their ill-fated farming claims established. They played “sideways rugby” on the hills for entertainment, since it was impossible to find flat ground for a field.
Here’s a hyperspeed video of some of the trail we walked:
Pretty twisty, huh?
And all this walking, sandwiched in the middle of a full day of rowing, after two days of poor sleep! We’re pretty tough!
Sebastian crossing the bouncy bridge.
Eventually we emerged on the side of a steep ravine, with a tributary of the river at the bottom.
Then we crossed a small bouncy rope-and-chain bridge, and came upon the object of our quest: The “Bridge To Nowhere”.
We hung out there for a while, enjoying the weirdness of a solid, modern-looking bridge in the middle of a dense forest along a dirt hiking trail.
For a little while it looked like my shirt was a bumblebee magnet.
A nearby sign told us some history:
An opportunity to nowhere. It looks as ominous as it sounds: A huge expanse of near-trackless forest that has completely swallowed all evidence of attempted farming, except for the bridge, which was obscured by dirt and vines when explorers found it years later.
“An opportunity to nowhere!” It looks as ominous as it sounds. We were standing in a huge expanse of near-trackless forest that had completely swallowed all evidence of the attempted farming from decades ago, except for some broken-down farming machinery and the bridge, which was obscured by dirt and vines and missing its railings and most of its top surface when explorers found it years later.
Eventually we turned back towards the boats. First we crossed back over that bouncy rope-and-chain bridge:
“It’s like a free bouncy house, but over a cliff!” Kerry said. “Or is it a ravine? Or a gorge? Or a canyon?”
That prompted a long discussion while we attempted to define each of the words. Our usual solution – look it up on the internet – didn’t work because we were a long way from any internet service. So we just walked and talked, while the forest buzzed and chirped around us.
I posed Kerry beneath a fancy-looking tree:
We got so engrossed in walking and talking that we missed the turnoff for our canoes, and had to walk back up the trail quite a ways to find it.
Back in the water, we paddled along. My feet were wet from launching the boats – again – and this time I got attacked by a horde of sand flies. Aaagh! I had to pause in my steering to slap angrily at them, but I only squished maybe five out of a hundred of the little bastards. I ended up with specks of my own blood all over my feet.
Francis, meanwhile, had his feet bare the entire time, and the flies didn’t even notice him. Just another example of his Super Outdoorsman Powers.
In a little while we arrived at the second cabin site. We beached the canoes and hauled everything up the hill, and Francis set about making another fine meal in the common area kitchen:
Then Sebastian, Kerry, and I went stalking about with our fancy cameras. Of course!
We said hello to the other tourists, and chatted with a few of them. They ran the spectrum from friendly and energetic to exhausted and surly.
Tamzen and her boyfriend whose name we've forgotten!
Here are two of the super-friendly ones! Sorry, I can’t remember their names…
The sunset made for some gorgeous backlit shots of the foliage.
The view across the river near sunset, at the campsite. If it looks a bit like farmland gone to seed, that's because it is.
The owners have switched to tourism, and opened a lodge on their property with access to the river.
This is the view across the river near sunset, at the campsite. If it looks a bit like farmland gone to seed, that’s because it is. The owners have switched to tourism, and opened a lodge on their property with access to the river.
Eventually I walked back inside to check on Francis. He was almost done cooking! Near the kitchen area I discovered a wood-burning stove, and with permission I set about building a fire. Sebastian rigged up a drying pole across the front of the stove using an old broom, and we all hung our wet socks along it.
Aah the comforts of civilization!
Happy campers, enjoying dessert provided by Francis!
Here are the happy campers, enjoying dessert provided by Francis: A merengue with condensed heavy cream, traditionally eaten with kiwi fruit or peaches. Can’t beat that classic combination of sugar and fat! Kerry made me some hot cocoa, too.
We stayed up late talking about travel ideas and making jokes, until someone came in from the tent area and told us we were keeping everyone awake. Sebastian and Katerina decided to sleep outside and Francis offered them his tent, which he wasn’t using since he planned to sleep in the kitchen area. The stove had warmed it up nicely. Kerry and I went back to the bunk room, and crawled into our borrowed sleeping bags.
Unfortunately, shortly after Sebastian and Katerina settled in, their tent filled up with bugs, driving them inside with Francis. Then, as the hours passed, the sink slowly overflowed because someone had left the plug in it. Francis woke up in the morning with his blankets soaking wet — and somehow, he was still cheerful!
We were up and about with plenty of time to wait for the shuttle that would take us safely up the mountain, but Kerry wasn’t feeling well, so we sat around in the sun near the depot instead of doing our usual excited exploring. While we waited, a group of girls from a Christian school asked if they could sing us a song as part of a “scavenger hunt” their class was participating in. I couldn’t help recording the show – it was amusing and a bit weird.
Kerry noticed that there were bees flying around the station, hunting moths. It was some kind of moth genocide, in fact. A bee would fly up to the plants near the bench, locate and carefully land on a moth, then methodically cut its head off. The headless corpse would drop onto the sidewalk, and the bee would fly on to the next moth. Perhaps this was an evolved form of pest control for the plants that sustained the bees?
As an aside, I’ve often wondered how modern farmers exploit these relationships between predator and prey. Everything has a predator, right? Wasps hunting caterpillars, beetles hunting aphids… It sounds like a fascinating area to study. I remember buying a box of ladybugs to protect my backyard lettuce crop, but the little jerks all flew and crawled away without seeming to notice the eggs and aphids I wanted them to eat. Bah!
The shuttle from Ohakune to National Park arrived with a bike trailer designed for regular bikes, but with a little guesswork we managed to get the recumbents secured.
We were traveling off-schedule and hadn’t bothered to book a room in advance, so we rode around National Park and scoped out the options. We wanted to be comfortable during our brief downtime, and that meant a clean place with thick walls and plenty of hot water – and internet, since I had plenty of photos to upload. We settled on the Plateau Lodge, and Kerry laid down for a nap while I rode out to explore the town a bit.
Here’s the automated weather station outside of National Park. There’s a line buried in the road leading out to some kind of sensor under one of the lanes. I’m not sure what it’s for – perhaps an electromagnet to count cars?
Here's the sensor in the road. Weird lookin'...
The road leading northeast, towards the crossing. The weather doesn't look good!
To the north I could see a long sheet of storm clouds weaving itself around the base of the mountains where we planned to embark on the Tongariro Crossing the next day. The weather was not going to cooperate, and in any case, Kerry was probably going to be too weak to attempt the crossing. Our schedule needed to change.
Here’s how they indicate whether the highway is passable. Road crews can change the sign from “open” to “closed” by flipping a metal plate back and forth. Pretty nifty.
I like how they put in a metal flap to hold the plate down during storms. The flap is held in place with a twisted piece of wire, and I couldn’t help thinking that if this was in the United States, there would have to be a padlock on it instead just to keep pranksters from flipping the sign as a joke.
I ate some snacks from a local gas station, chatted on the phone with a few family members, and rode back to check on Kerry. She was up, so we tackled the next thing on our to-do lost: Locating the box with our sleeping bags that we’d shipped to Adrift Outdoors, the river touring company.
We couldn’t locate the Adrift Outdoors office, so we called the shipping company to ask exactly where they’d delivered the box. They left it with the staff at the restaurant on Waimarino Tokaanu Road. Confusing. We located the restaurant and quizzed the cook, and he said he used to have the box, but a week ago he took it to the office in the back of the building, so we went around there and found a sliding door with a bunch of rafting equipment visible behind it – but the door was locked.
I dug through my emails and found a phone number for Adrift Outdoors and called it, standing around in the parking lot. The woman who answered explained that Adrift Outdoors wasn’t actually run from the office in the restaurant, but that’s where everybody met up to prepare for each excursion in the morning, so it was the most sensible place to put a map marker. I had to agree. But what about the box?
“We haven’t received any sleeping bags here, sorry. We did get a strange box a week or so ago.”
“A strange box? What was in it?”
“Just a couple of metal plates, with wheels attached, and cloth straps wound around them.”
Ahah. Somewhere along the line, the shipping company messed up, and the hardware we use to move the bicycle boxes around at the airport was sent to National Park, and our sleeping bags got sent ahead to New Plymouth where we would be disassembling the bikes. Not a showstopper; we could just borrow some sleeping bags from Adrift Outdoors, and carry the metal plates from here to New Plymouth.
We talked with the Adrift manager for a while about the weather, which wasn’t looking good due to an approaching cyclone. Our best option would be to move the canoe trip up a few days, starting it tomorrow, and do the Tongariro Crossing afterwards, perhaps with a day of rest in between.
So we ate dinner, then rode home to pack up for the canoe trip!
Packing list:
covered sandals
shorts
light top
2 warm tops
a waterproof rain jacket
sun hat
sunglasses
suntan lotion
personal medical needs
set of spare warm clothing to change into at night including underwear
Yesterday began with petting the local cat. Today begins with meeting some adorable ducks!
Then we launched a double-kayak out onto Lake Taupo, the first of two water excursions for the day, both scheduled 2 months in advance via the Taupo branch of Canoe & Kayak. The weather was overcast but we didn’t mind – the important thing is that we didn’t get rained out.
Lake Taupo has a surface area of about 240 square miles. Just for comparison, my current hometown of Oakland occupies an area of about 1/3 of that. It’s the largest lake in New Zealand, and the center of much local folklore. It was created by a gigantic volcanic eruption approximately 26,000 years ago – the largest eruption in the world over the past 70,000 years. The volcano is currently considered dormant – not extinct – and sports a collection of underwater geothermal vents that support sponges and other invertebrates.
We set out from Jerusalem Bay, with a fine misty view of Mount Tauhara just beyond the sparkling city of Taupo, and headed counterclockwise around the lake, while our guide told us fun stories about the Maori tribes in the area.
In due time we encountered the Maori carvings:
These were created in the 1970’s, the masterwork of a local artist (Matahi Whakataka-Brightwell) who managed to convince the tribal elders – who tightly controlled the development of the lake – that his creations would enhance tourism while also raising awareness of tribal history. They were created over a number of years, carved in sections during the few months of the year when weather conditions made work possible.
The main carving is over 30 feet tall, and is a likeness of a Maori navigator named Ngatoroirangi. The likeness is distinctive because of “ta moko” – the Maori tradition of physically modifying one’s face with lines and other patterns to describe one’s family legacy and position in the tribe. In other words, it’s distinctive because he was the only one with this particular pattern, and it’s also descriptive, because the pattern can be read like a code, conveying personal information about the bearer. Like how a marine will get a tattoo describing their rank or regiment, or a place where they saw action – but even more complicated and ceremonial.
Anyway, we only got about 15 minutes to float around in front of the main carving in peace, and then a couple of tour boats rolled up, stuffed with onlookers. We felt smug that we could actually touch the carvings while they could only look!
We paddled back the way we came, and stopped for a break at an outcropping of smooth rocks that presented an easy place to beach the kayaks. Some of us drank tea and ate snacks, and some of us went plunging into the water, which was surprisingly pleasant.
The guide claimed we could actually drink the water without fear, but none of us was inclined to test his claim!
All told, it was a fine outing on the lake, and it only used up the first third of the day. We rowed back over to our starting point, listening to more stories about the history and geography of the area, and then clamored into the company van and returned to Taupo for lunch.
Kerry and I walked around downtown in search of a restaurant, and passed by a store that reminded me of hipster culture back home:
I first heard of "Shabby Chic" a few years ago in the Bay Area. Apparently it's a style of decoration where you make your house look like the interior of an abandoned barn that kids have been using as a fort.
I first heard of “shabby chic” a few years ago in the Bay Area. Apparently it’s a style of decoration where you make your house look like the interior of an abandoned barn that kids have been using as a fort.
I find it both puzzling and hilarious that someone has opened a store dedicated to selling items that I might find sitting on the sidewalk in Oakland.
Weird stuff for sale...
I find it both puzzling and hilarious that someone has opened a store dedicated to selling items that I might find sitting on the sidewalk in Oakland. The rent for this shop must be little or nothing, because I can’t believe their margins are very big. Taupo is a big city by New Zealand standards, but is it big enough to support a store this frivolous? Who knows.
Anyway, Kerry and I ate some excellent fish and chips and home-brewed cider while we waited for our second tour to begin. On the walk back to the kayak place we met with a fellow cycle tourist who sounded remarkably like Cary Elwes:
Check out those knobbly tires!
He’s originally from Alaska and has been traveling all over the world on those same tires. What I find most interesting about his setup, though, is the solar panel arranged on the back. I remember obsessing for months and months over the best way to charge my collection of gadgets on the road, and after all the dust settled, I faced the simple fact that I was probably never going to go anywhere more than two days’ ride from a wall socket – and if I did, a cellphone would be worthless anyway. I wonder how and why this fellow reached a different conclusion? He’s certainly more traveled than I am…
I didn’t think to ask this question in the moment, though. We just chatted about our histories, took a photo, and moved on. Kerry and I didn’t want to be late for our next excursion:
An easy float down a few miles of the Waikato River! We put in right around here at Pois Road:
The water was quite shallow here, and when we stepped into our kayaks they pressed into the sandy bottom and wedged us in place. Here’s a shot of Kerry pulling herself forward on one of my oars, next to our guide.
Kerry grabs her oar, and I pull her forward into the water.
Once we got out into the main body of the river, we used the paddles only to make minor course corrections. The current was strong and steady.
Away we go!
Just ahead of us we could see a group of college-age kids setting forth on a collection of inner-tubes, tethered loosely to each other with rope. They had an extra inner-tube with a cooler jammed inside it, filled with drinks, that they would reel in and plunder from time to time.
Moving past some fellow drifters. That's four inner tubes: One for each person, and one for the cooler.
I filmed a bunch of the trip with my hand-dandy head-mounted camera, of course! Here are some highlights.
I don’t know what this little river island is called, but it’s swarming with plants and birds:
Checking out a large rock under the water:
“Oxygen Weed” is an invasive plant, foreign to New Zealand, that has grown in great quantities since when it was accidentally introduced:
Part of the river has high canyon walls along it. This particular cliff has a bungee-jumping platform suspended above. Scary!
The canyons along the river. This particular cliff has a bungee-jumping platform built over it.
For the less adventurous, there’s a hot spring a little farther along the riverbank, feeding into the river from a small waterfall.
Our kayak trip made a brief stop at a riverside hot spring. It was odd seeing so many people, after seeing so few on the river.
"This is actually a very slow day," our guide said. "In December you'll see well over a hundred people here, every day."
The hot springs was choked with other tourists, most of them of the well-to-do European kind. It was odd seeing so many people here after seeing so few drifting on the river.
“This is actually a very slow day,” our guide said. “In December you’ll see well over a hundred people here, every day.”
Kerry warmed up her feet in the water. I didn’t feel cold and I didn’t feel like swapping my clothes, so I just posed for a picture instead:
While we were loading back up, I made brief friends with an adorable local dog:
After that it was a short drift to a riverside campground with a crude boat ramp, where we disembarked. Our total distance doesn’t look like much if you view it on a map, but it was a very relaxing and relatively inexpensive way to spend a couple of hours, especially after all the rowing we did earlier in the day on Lake Taupo.
Our route while drifting on the river
Back in town we got thai food from a much better restaurant than the one we’d tried the day before. They actually served a thai iced tea! YESSSS!
We handed our laundry to the in-house washing service, and watched some Venture Brothers. It rained pretty heavily. We talked for a while about our plans: Should we leave here a day early, foregoing the unscheduled time around Lake Taupo, in order to get more wiggle room on our journey to National Park? We might need the extra time if one of the shuttle buses is too full to take our bicycles…
We decided to sleep on it. As we were preparing for bed, we heard a knock on the door and a man handed our laundry back, freshly washed and folded in the sack we’d provided. Good! No need to wait for that in the morning.
Sleep came easily since we were exhausted, but we woke up later when a group of people a few rooms down started making a huge ruckus, smoking and laughing on the front porch of their room. I walked out and asked them to keep the noise down in as calm a way as I could, though if they’d kept it up I would have probably lost my temper and yelled at them quite loudly. Kerry called the room service line to file a noise complaint but they didn’t answer. Hoohah!
So, we set off a-wandering from the Waiotapu Tavern and in a few hours we were face-to-face with this:
A great, big, boiling, festering mud hole in the middle of the forest!
You probably can’t hear it in the video, but it’s making noise like a couple of horses throwing a dance party in a closet. An endless, semi-rhythmic thudding sound that doesn’t just vibrate your ears, but vibrates the whole area around you.
The truly great thing about this experience was the act of discovery. Kerry and I just crept into the untracked forest to find the source of a mysterious noise, and ended up staring at this infernal thing. No guideropes, no fences, no warning signs. Not even anyone else around. If your judgement is poor and you tumble over the edge, you will die, and chances are nobody will even discover your corpse for a long time. By the time they do, your flesh will be boiled into mush, leaving only a stew of bones and some expensive equipment to tempt the next victim.
Awesome!!
But I’m telling this tale out of order. We didn’t go wandering straight into the forest, we ended up there after exploring a slightly overgrown path leading away from the established touring area. We didn’t see any signs warning us away, so like most optimistic and slightly devious tourists, we “assumed it was allowed” and kept going. I know; we’re monsters.
Here’s the route we walked:
Only part of that is off the beaten path – the part labeled “Thermal Road”. After an hour or so of quietly exploring it we did become rather nervous that we were breaking some rule, simply because we never saw anyone else around. By contrast, the first area we saw – a series of mudpots with nice walkways around them – was crowded with tourists, even during this off-season day.
The smell of sulphur was intense!
That area was well-worth photographing, too. I could see why the government had decided to build fences and guardrails there. Small children were running around, and I’m sure that when some of them first saw the bubbling pools, they were seized by desire to jump into the mud and stomp around as though it were just another squishy creek-bed. That would not end well, of course.
To tell you the truth, I was tempted too. At times the mud looked like melted chocolate, and I felt the totally irrational urge to scoop some up with my bare hand and lick it, just in case it turned out to be delicious pudding.
WE HAVE LIFTOFF !!!
GABLOOOOSH !
The fact that this “pudding” was constantly exploding upwards towards my face and squeezing out plumes of steam should have totally cancelled that urge. But it didn’t. Every few minutes or so I was thinking: Mmmmmm, delicious chocolate…
Glllooooooorrrp!
KAPOW !!!
Delicious fiery exploding chocolate, melts your mouth – and your hand – and practically everything else in your body. Even at regular temperature, the water in the mud is still dangerous because it’s acidic, and would be unhealthy to swallow or even bathe in. This is pretty darned far from a nice chockie treat. AND YET…
Mmmmm, steaming hot pools of deliciousness! Maybe it tastes like ramen? That reek of sulfur could just be boiled eggs… Argh, stupid human brain! Stop that!
Also not to be trusted: Colorful mushrooms just a few steps off the trail. Don’t believe their candy-coated lies!
This is Thermal Road in all its glory:
We knew it wasn’t good for vehicle traffic because we found several trees laid across it:
This is one of the many trees that fell across the road. They didn't stop us!!
Road's gettin' harder to see!
No trouble for explorers on foot, of course.
Along either side of the road we could see bubbling pools, some filled with mud, others clear and shrouded in vapor. Look! I made soup!
Look! I made soup!
This was definitely not part of the standard tour-on-rails. One inattentive step over the embankment and you could be in serious trouble. Check out this video for an example:
Some of the weird sights – and curious sounds – were just too far behind thick foliage for us to go bushwhacking over to them. Plus there was that nagging feeling that we were disturbing an environment better left alone. If it wasn’t too far from the road and we could get to it only with footsteps we felt it was worth a shot.
During one tentative off-road exploration I encountered this scene. My main camera’s 50mm lens couldn’t capture the whole thing so I took a panorama with my phone.
Dementors of the forest. Creeepy!
You’ll have to trust me when I say it was one of the creepiest moments in the whole trip. Each of those central “figures” in the photograph was about nine feet tall and seemed to be reaching out to me as I stared at them. Kerry was waiting back on the road, out of sight, so it was just me alone in the clearing with these ghastly formations, mixed with distant bubbling sounds and the smell of geothermal activity.
In other places, the smell intensified into a flowing mist, whose mineral content fostered strange growths of lichen.
In some places it was growing directly on the ground like a carpet.
A little ways beyond the red lichen I encountered a horde of red damselflies. I don’t think there was any reason for the color-coordination, but you never know…
These little red damselflies were all over the place here...
The intense colors and the layering of the vegetation was almost overwhelming. In a good way!
And then, we heard a particularly loud thumping noise – people on horseback perhaps – and went looking for the source, and got a big surprise:
Someone obviously left the kettle boiling way waaaaayyy too long.
A great, big, boiling, festering mud hole in the middle of the forest. The sound and the smell was intense. We didn't dare get any closer than this.
At this point we were certain this was not part of the approved tourist package. No park service would ever endorse a hike around this unstable, delicate terrain. We took a bunch of photos and returned to the road, moving faster now. Ahead of us our iPhone maps showed an intersection with a road that split off to the right, eventually meeting up with the official-sounding Waiotapu Loop Road. In due time we saw some evidence of recent human activity, which was a relief even though we didn’t know how to interpret it:
Then we spotted a man-made clearing through the woods to our right, and cut through the trees directly towards it. We didn’t have a lot of faith in our digital maps, and we weren’t willing to follow the road any longer than necessary at this point.
On the way through the woods we did see some nice moss-on-moss action:
Fresh moss growing in a big bulge on top of old moss.
And Kerry took a photo of me investigating the moss, which I rather like!
Tired and unwashed, but having an excellent adventure!
The clearing turned out to be a parking lot, next to the Lady Knox Geyser gate. The gate was closed and locked since the 10:15am eruption was already long finished, but we weren’t upset – we’d just had our own custom adventure, and were happy to be back on a regular road.
We eventually emerged from the road to a parking lot, next to the Lady Knox Geyser gate. The gate was closed and locked, however, since the 10:15am eruption was already long finished.
Walkin' with mah stick!
Of course, it wasn’t 10 minutes later that we found a path leading back into the woods, and went off-road again. This time the path led to an adorable little waterfall, and a very emphatic warning sign:
No problem, yo. Neither of us had swimming gear, and neither of us felt like swimming anyway. But we did take a bunch of pictures. Later on at home I was struck by the suspicious resemblance to Patrick O’Hearn’s “So Flows The Current” album cover. Gotta be a coincidence.
The hot water seeping through the porous rock created some gorgeous lichen formations. Or is that moss? Or some kind of algae? I don’t even know!
You might think we’d seen enough for one day, but there was still plenty more to go, for a little farther down the road we entered the official Waiotapu Thermal Wonderland area!
Plenty of colorful things to see here:
Not actually called "Gatorade Lake", but it might as well be.
The smell was intense!
And the more colorful, the more stinky!
Refined collections of what you find around the craters.
This formation is called “The Devil’s Inkpots”, according to the sign nearby:
The Devil's Inkpots, according to the sign.
And this formation is called “The Devil’s Snotty Nasal Regions”:
This is a formation called The Devil's Snotty Nasal Regions.
Okay, I made that up.
Okay, I made that one up.
In addition to colorful, things around here are also burning hot, and sometimes there is almost no way to tell the difference between a harmless bubbling stream that you could stick your fingers in, and a seething cauldron that would immediately turn your fingers into cooked sausages.
I like to think that the sign in this picture comes with a little caption, reading, “don’t stick your hand over a gushing vent that’s 100 degrees Celsius you complete moron.”
The sign says "Don't stick your hand over the gushing vents, they're 100 degrees Celsius, you morons."
Here’s a smaller region from the previous photo. Now look at that and tell me: Is it room-temperature? Are those bubbles from some kind of additive in the water, or are they from recent boiling, or both? Wanna step in there and find out?
Since there’s a bit of mystery about what’s what, there are many appropriate captions for these little signs:
These signs are good, but there should be more of them.
"Do not cook your eggs in here."
"Do not do your laundry in here."
"This is not a pet bathing zone."
"Do not throw tennis balls in here."
"Not suitable as soup, no matter how many onions you dump in."
"Standing here will not conceal your lack of deodorant."
"The second-degree burns are not worth the facebook photo."
"There is no P in our Sulhur Sring. Let's keep it that way."
“Do not cook your eggs in here.”
“Do not do your laundry in here.”
“This is not a pet bathing zone.”
“Do not throw tennis balls in here.”
“No matter how many onions you drop in, this will not become soup.”
“Standing here will not conceal your lack of deodorant.”
“The second-degree burns are not worth the facebook post.”
“There is no P in our Sulhur Sring. Let’s keep it that way.”
The most visually impressive formation was Champagne Pool, and the overflow area surrounding it.
It looks inviting like a warm bath, but you really really shouldn’t go swimming:
Kerry and I took quite a few photos here, framing things through the steam and catching little details like the crystals growing around the rim:
Loose crystals growing at the side of the lake?
These tiny bubbles are one of the reasons for its name:
And here’s a close-up of the tafoni-like formations made by the acidic, mineral-rich water trickling down from Champagne Pool, over the mound of sandy rock nearby.
I’m not a geologist, but my current theory is that these form because the acidic water dissolves the material holding the grains together, and when grains come loose they are pushed along by the flow until they accumulate into a barrier, and the barrier is heated by sunlight causing just a little bit of evaporation on the downhill side of the barrier, causing the saturated solution to deposit some of its anchoring material in place, cementing the barrier and making a pool. Then, further flow of acidic water into the pool causes it to deepen, as more anchoring material is dissolved and carried over the rim.
I imagine the physics simulation that would accurately predict this would have to be an extremely accurate one indeed…
An interesting project for future computer programmers, with their much much more powerful future computing platforms!
Besides, I’m too busy right now taking photographs of stuff and going “oooooo!”
Photographs sometimes obscure the scale of things. This is an area about the size of a dining room … but it could also be a hundred square miles of weird geography on some far-flung alien planet in a Ridley Scott film! Woooeeeeeeoooooooo! *boop* *beep*
Photographs sometimes obscure the scale of things. This is an area about the size of a dining room ... but it could also be a hundred square miles of weird geography on some far-flung alien planet in a Ridley Scott film! Woooeeeeeeoooooooo! *boop* *beep*
This looks like the activity of some rude barnyard animal, but it’s actually one of hundreds of sulfurous springs perforating the canyon floor. It’s too small to have an official name, so I’m naming it “The Devil’s Curry Accident”.
This looks like the activity of some rude barnyard animal, but it's actually one of hundreds of sulfurous springs perforating the canyon floor.
This one's too small to have an official name, so I'm naming it The Devil's Curry Incident.
These two formations are called “The Devil’s Nutritional Yeast” and “The Devil’s Suspiciously Old Parmesan Cheese” I think.
This is called, like, the Devil's Parmesan Cheese Collection, or something.
Pretty sure this spot is called The Devil's Nutritional Yeast.
According to the park map, these are hills made of alum. Maybe I’m reading the map wrong, because to me it looks exactly like the chalk rocks I would dig out of the hills back home.
(Kerry’s comment: “Hah! It looks like a butt!!”)
According to the park map, these are hills made of alum. Maybe I'm reading the map wrong, because to me it looks exactly like the chalk rocks I would dig out of the hills back home.
Kerry's comment: "Hah! It looks like a butt!!"
True, very true! It was a day full of things that look like butts, or sound like butts, or smell like butts!
At the very edge of the official park walkway, we stopped to gaze out over Lake Ngakoro, and watch the sediment from the waterfall slowly mix with the more intense colors of the lake:
You can tell from the photo that even after seven hours of hiking, I’m in a good mood!
The walk back to the tavern was long, but damn, what a day.
