Rotorua, New Zealand: Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland

Yes . . . still catching up on posts from spring and summer, while we're already well into fall!

After spending our first day in Rotorua poking around the town itself, Nana and I ventured a little further afield the following morning, to Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland, a short drive south of town.

That's steam!

Wai-O-Tapu is only one of several geothermal valleys in the Rotorua area, but according to the lovely folks at the Malfroy Motor Lodge, it's the best. Although I don't really have much basis for comparison, I do have to say I was pretty impressed.

First, Wai-O-Tapu is home to the semi-man-made, semi-accidental Lady Knox Geyser. The story goes that inmates from a nearby prison work camp stumbled on the geyser and induced it to erupt spectacularly when they mixed soap with the hot water while washing their clothes. These days, park guides induce eruptions daily at 9:45 AM.

Second, Wai-O-Tapu is home to some spectacular and, um, sonorous mud pools. Check out the video below (e-mail readers will need to click through to the blog):

It was a lot of fun trying to get shots of erupting bubbles.

There's one! (Nana got it!)

After the mud pools, we entered the park proper - a true wonderland of steaming pits, bubbling neon pools, and strange rock formations straight out of science fiction.

Somehow, the combination of steam and ferns always feels vaguely Jurassic to me. So we both kept a sharp lookout for carnivorous dinosaurs.

The view from the bottom of the valley.

It looks like dirt, but it was actually a kind of oily liquid down at the bottom of the hole.

Tar pits in action - "The Devil's Inkpots."

I think this is the "Artist's Palette?" Some of the pools started to blur together.

The top of the "Primrose Terrace," which was weird. (See below.)

They had this wacky little boardwalk across the top of the Primrose Terrace. A little terrifying, knowing that a single misstep and the ground a few feet away on either side could seriously maim you. Granted, it could also do absolutely nothing to you - but that uncertainty is the fun, isn't it?

Just to drive the point home.

The Primrose Terrace from above. It's a really slow-moving trickle that leaves terraced mineral deposits from the hot springs upstream. 

A close-up of the Primrose Terrace.

Looking down the Primrose Terrace.

Some extreme close-ups of the Primrose Terrace.

I think this one is the "Opal Pool." It was steaming like nobody's business the day we were there.

Steam!

STEAM!

STEAM EVERYWHERE!

The pits were a bit hard to photograph. Very difficult to get an appropriate sense of scale. This one could have fit a small house inside.

That ain't algae in that pool - it's a bunch of sulfur and other good stuff.

Now, that's not all for Rotorua - next up is a post on a spectacular Maori dinner show at Mitai Maori Village.

Rotorua, New Zealand: Geothermal Sites

Yup, still catching up on posts from the spring and summer. Here's another!

As part of our swing through the North Island of New Zealand, just after our awesome unplanned stop in Hobbiton, Nana and I washed up in Rotorua, a town in the center of the island known as a hotspot for Maori culture - and as a hotspot, full stop.

You see, Rotorua sits in the heart of New Zealand's Tapuo Volcanic zone, amid a steaming landscape of hot springs, stinking pits, and geothermal mud pools. This makes Rotorua one of the world's geothermal wonderlands - kind of the Yellowstone of the antipodes, if you will. We'd only planned one night in Rotorua, but the place was so incredible we just had to extend our stay.

We spent our first day in Rotorua poking around the town itself, where we quickly learned that you don't need to venture far to find geothermal weirdness. For instance, part of the directions we were given to the town's central park involved, at one point, "driving towards the columns of steam."

In fact, if I recall correctly, part of the reason why the park is a park is that all the geothermal activity makes it unsuitable for development.

Not that geothermal activity has stopped builders before: the locals we met told stories of people with steam vents in their backyards - or even in their basements! - that can even be used for boiling eggs or making tea.

From the park, we went to the Rotorua Museum, housed in the spectacular old Rotorua Bath House.

Completed in 1908, the Bath House sits on a grassy peninsula jutting out into Lake Rotorua. On a clear day, the mineral waters of the lake shine a bright gray-blue when viewed from the rooftop observation deck.

We went to the museum not expecting much, but in the end it may have been the best museum of the trip. In addition to a film on the devastating 1886 Mount Tarawera eruption and a fascinating exhibit on Maori culture, there was also a very amusing tour of the Bath House building itself. Long story short: the place opened just when places like it were going out of style.

Quick! You heard the man! Bathe like it's going out of style!

Bonus: a "rainbow" in the rafters!

Of course, the geothermal fun didn't stop there: our accommodation, the highly (highly highly highly) recommended Malfroy Motor Lodge, had a geothermal pool and a mineral hot spring out back. Nothing like a moonlit swim on a frigid night!

Stay tuned - there are more Rotorua adventures to come!

Everything's Smaller in Japan

Even the Hummers.

Christchurch, NZ: Gateway to the Antarctic

Yes, Nana and I are still catching up on posts from the summer - and now interesting stuff is starting to happen this fall, too!

Since the earliest days of Antarctic exploration, Christchurch has served as the main jumping-off point for expeditions to the great southern continent. This isn't really a surprise when you consider Christchurch's location: Christchurch is one of the closest cities in the world to the South Pole, and pretty much the closest major city to the region around the Ross Ice Shelf, which is roughly speaking the closest the coast of Antarctica gets to the South Pole itself.

But still, nowhere is really all that close to Antarctica - we're still talking thousands of miles, meaning that any staging area would need some hefty transportation infrastructure to be able to supply and coordinate missions over such huge distances.

Thus in Christchurch the International Antarctic Center was born. Representing the combined efforts of the American, New Zealand, and Italian Antarctic research programs, the International Antarctic Center is a huge research and logistics facility that supports those nations' bases in the area around the Ross Ice Shelf and at the South Pole. The Center, which was thankfully unaffected by the recent earthquakes, is also one of Christchurch's most popular tourist attractions, doubling as a hands-on museum of all things Antarctic.

In addition to the Center's penguin rescue program, which Nana touched on in a previous post, I especially loved the wealth of exhibits that tried to capture what it's actually like to live and work on the Antarctic bases. There was even a winter storm simulator - though disappointingly, the storm simulator didn't really get any stormier than a typical Midwestern winter blow.

The two big takeaways? Emperor penguins are ENORMOUS.

That's a life-sized profile. Seriously. They're some of the biggest birds in the world.

And Nana and I have officially stood on snow from each of the Poles.

Granted, it may have been in liquid form at the time. And thousands of miles from the source.

PS: I refuse to call it the International Antarctic Centre. Thank you for understanding.

Christchurch, New Zealand - The Earthquake & the re:START Pop-Up Mall

Over the first few weeks of the school year, Nana and I are reaching back to catch up on some stuff from the spring and early summer . . . at least until we do some more interesting stuff to blog about here in Japan!

In September 2010, the city of Christchurch, New Zealand was struck by the first of a series of huge earthquakes that will change the historic city forever. The worst of these quakes, in February 2011, killed 185 people and brought down the historic Christchurch Cathedral. And they're not over: seismologists predict that moderately strong quakes will continue into the near future, though they do seem to be moving away to the east.

It's hard to overstate the impact these earthquakes have had on the city. When Nana and I visited in July of 2012,  large parts of the downtown area, including the central business district, were still cordoned off as engineers worked to ensure the stability of the buildings inside.

Red = extreme danger.

Several foot and road bridges still haven't been repaired.

At the same time, plans to demolish the remaining structure of Christchurch Cathedral, we learned, were moving ahead, though not without some local opposition.

One of the locals we chatted with basically told us that, for many people, Christchurch is the Cathedral.

Tough stuff for a recovering community. In the meantime, though, the commercial tenants of the red zone are working hard to return to business as usual. Nowhere is this more evident than in the re:START "pop-up mall," a temporary shopping center built out of recycled shipping containers.

On our non-skiing afternoon in Christchurch, Nana and I made sure to stop by to engage in some reciprocal retail therapy - grabbing some books and a delicious pizza while bolstering the local economy, to boot.

Throughout our brief stay in Christchurch, Nana and I were touched by the optimism and resolve of the locals we met. The city is clearly suffering - the population has shrunk drastically, with many young people heading off to Australia to find work - and no one can reasonably expect that things will ever be the way they were. But the city is also taking a clear-eyed look at the future, embracing some clever plans for sustainable regrowth. Obviously, rebuilding will take some grit, but if the handful of folks we chatted with are any indication, there's more than enough grit to go around.

Wednesday Weirdness: Black Mont-Blanc Ice Cream Bars

On the top of Mont-Blanc snow of choco has fallen What a amazing news it is! Mont-Blanc is the highest in Alps. And Black Mont-Blanc is the highest taste of all ice-cream.

Actually, very delicious. The snow of choco doesn't stick very well, though, and soon becomes the snow on the front of your shirt. Perhaps not quite the highest taste of all ice-cream, but still quite a amazing news!