Dotted around the central region of North Island is a huge geo-thermal playground, with distinct areas of steaming sulphorous pools ranging from warm to a hot boil; steam vents; bubbling mud pools; geysers bubbling away quietly, then spouting huge plumes of hot water/ stream/mud into the air just to catch you out! The whole area sits on a series of magma “spikes” and is hugely unstable, and as such, remains a tourist draw, even though it can be pretty dangerous.
The area which really kick-started tourism in NZ was just to the South-East of Rotarua; two natural “cascades” of silica terraces, formed thousands of years ago by some catastrophic past eruption. These terraces were extremely beautiful, one white and one pink, due to the different minerals cascading down them to form the terraces – both of which had formed a series of shallow pools, several metres wide, tiered down the hillside until they reached the lake. At the top of each terrace, the water was very hot; but as it cascaded down, each tier got cooler, until at the very bottom, it was just pleasantly warm.
As you can imagine, this was enjoyed and revered by the local Maori tribe, who lived very happily in this benign geo-thermal wonderland for generations; using it for many purposes – pure pleasure: bathing / washing etc; cooking (in the hotter, top pools); and some sacred areas too.
In the early 1820’s the first European’s hit the region – missionaries were the first, and did their best to “reform” these “primitive people”; bring them religion; teach them how to farm “properly” in the English traditions – grow wheat, mill and make flour; build “proper” houses, with gardens in enclosure spaces, on streets with fences. You get the picture!,
Since being “civilized”, eventually the word got out about these amazing silica terraces, and early travelers from around Europe began to arrive to see this phenomenon for themselves.
The Maoris , who until this stage, had never seen “Money”, soon caught on, and - never a race to miss out on an opportunity – realized they were sitting on a goldmine, and organized themselves into an early tourism industry. The tribes who lived at the entrance to the terraces, started charging travelers entrance to their area. To reach the terraces, you needed to be ferried across the lake, which incurred another charge, and, of course, once there, you needed a guide to show you all the wonderful areas, look after your clothes whilst you bathed, provide you with food and drink etc. One of the first guides was a (now) famous Maori lady called Sophia, who was reputedly a beauty and interesting, reliable & knowledgeable guide.
This influx of travelers brought a good income to the local tribes, and led to the development of several hotels close by to service the visitors, mostly run by Europeans. Some local tribal elders however, were very unhappy with the changes in the traditional ways, and predicted that greed and change would bring catastrophe.
By the mid 1880’s business was booming, but in 1886, New Zealand disaster struck one night, when Mt Tarawera exploded, splitting a large tract of land which resulted in the terraces sinking to the bottom of the lake. Huge dust clouds rained down for hours after the explosion, burying many surrounding villages in volcanic ash
By morning, the ash had stopped falling and many survivors made their escape –those who had found shelter in traditional Maori homes (with steep pitched roofs reaching almost to the ground, and no windows) mostly survived, but unsurprisingly, the European style hotels, missions etc,with shallow or flat roofs were wrecked incurring many fatalities.
The day before the disaster, Sophia, our guide, had been taking a group of tourists across the lake when they saw an ancient war canoe, full of warriors – visible for moments, then disappearing into the mists!
We visited this village, Te Wairoa, a few days ago –check out www.buriedvillage.co.nz it was absolutely fascinating. We were shown round the site by Sophia’s grandson – a lovely Maori guy called Ho-ne, who had lots of stories to tell, and a LOT of bad jokes. What a character! The village has been partially excavated and now tells the story of the lost 8th wonder of the world and delivers a thought-provoking message about commercialism, social conversion and “civilization”. On the whole, Maori culture, although downtrodden by the first settlers, has stood up for itself and its traditions, and has managed to maintain and protect its traditions and history, despite also embracing the 21st Century. What has happened here with the indigenous race feels so much better than the fate of the Australian Aborigines.
Another, much smaller area of geothermal silica terraces exists a few miles further south of Rotarua, on the way to Lake Taupo – Orakei Korako. We visited here early one morning, when the early morning sun on lake Ohakuri was beautiful. Check out www.orakeikorako.co.nz – it’s the only remaining natural silica terrace and, although smaller than the pink and white terraces, was still pretty amazing. There are gushing geysers, colourful terraces, bubbling mud – the lot! The whole area has a boardwalk around it – we were the first to visit, and had the whole place to ourselves for an hour. Magic. There is also one of only 2 known geothermal caves in the wold here – Ruatapu Cave – with a jade green pool at the bottom, alive with nesting birds and shimmering like a jewel.
