Geothermal Parks

Since I couldn't decide at all, I had 2 parks in front of me today for about 100 dollars, and in hindsight, the second one would have been enough. However, the first one had one of the 2 world-renowned caves in a geothermal area, so that was pretty cool. So, first off, I went to: Orakei Korako Geothermal Park & Cave. The funny thing is that you are actually taken across the river by boat to see it. And since there were hardly any visitors, I basically had a private boat ride, just the captain and me. I also didn’t encounter a single person during the walk, so I had everything to myself. Since nothing was blocked by people, I went through it quite quickly, which for the price of 51 dollars was already crazy; maybe it wasn't worth it, but it was still very cool to see. You walk through wooden walkways, and there was a lot to see. However, it only got really cool in the second park: Wai-O-Tapu. There were definitely more people here, but thankfully it dispersed a bit. Here, there were huge craters, lots of steam, and super crazy colors, neon orange, yellow, etc. The Champagne Pool was really impressive. I treated myself there since financially it was all the same anyway. I had a pie and cheese, it was really good, and the brownie was 12/10. After that, I went to the Warm Lake. There was a small gravel road leading to it with bottomless potholes. A dude stopped me, saying, 'Yeah, it’s not so warm for swimming today, blabla,' it was quite nice, chatted briefly with him, and yes, the water was indeed like a bathtub, so I found it quite warm. However, since it was a muddy puddle full of worms, swimming was out of the question for me. So off I went to Rotorua, the city that smells more like rotten eggs than the parks. I was so lucky and snagged the last free parking spot at the camp. I then walked to see the hot water park. In the middle of the city, there are steaming, boiling lakes at 100 degrees. No wonder it stinks here. For whatever reason, there are really alarmingly many homeless people and junkies (can you say that? Yeah, you know what I mean). I was at the i-site a bit, maybe because I almost used everything up :) Tomorrow there’s still a lot planned here before I head to Hamilton. Now that the sun is actually out, I will take a walk this afternoon and enjoy it and try to get used to the smell.