Mature Flâneur down under
From Hell’s Gate to Craters of the Moon
New Zealand’s (volcanic) hot spots
Many lakes in the center of New Zealand are circular in shape for a very simple reason: they are calderas of volcanic eruptions from ages past. A caldera is the inside of a crater, and so to stroll along the shores of these lakes is to walk the rim of a volcano.
Teresa (beloved spouse, intrepid co-flâneur) and I spent three days each by the two largest of these lakes, Rotorua and Taupō. Taupō is the largest lake in New Zealand. Its volcano erupted massively about 260 A.D. — the largest eruption on earth for the preceding 5,000 years. People as far away as Japan would have noticed their sunsets and sunrises were particularly vivid that year, as dust from the eruption swirled far across the Pacific.
These lakes are too big for me to really “get’ their volcanic nature. Stocked with trout, featuring boat cruises and kayak tours, black swans and ducks paddling about (above), I can’t wrap my head around the fact they are actually the mouths of violent eruptions from ages past — muted only for the time being. It’s actually easier for me to feel the closeness of the molten magma beneath our feet in the region’s thermal parks. These feature bubbling hot springs, fumaroles venting steam, and hot mud pits. They are all on Māori land, and each has its own unique geology, tribal lore, and marketing approach. We visited three of these very different parks this past week:
Hell’s Gate
Located in the far side of the lake, away from most of Rotorua’s tourist attractions, there’s no doubt the provocative name draws people to this steamy hellscape. Teresa and I smelled the sulphur from the parking lot. Owned and operated by the local Māori tribe, Ngāti Rangiteaorere, they have constructed a walkway through this portion of their tribal territory filled with bubbling mud pits.
When underground rivers flow into thermal areas, the water turns to steam. If steam rises up through water, you get hot springs. If steam rises up through fissures in rock, you get fumaroles. And, if steam rises up through clay and volcanic ash deposits, it liquifies into mud, and looks like pools of bubbling chocolate pudding — only grey.
“Bubbling mud pits” might not have drawn the crowds, so I wondered who was the PR genius who came up with “Hell’s Gate”? It was none other than George Bernard Shaw, who visited the site while touring New Zealand in 1934. There’s a large plaque in his honor in the park, and some of the other steaming mud pits bear the names Shaw gave to them, such as “Sodom and Gomorrah.” — wise not to chose that one as the park’s name!
As well as the walk through hell, the park features a spa where you can soak in the hot mud. Yum! According to the Hell’s Gate website:
As you walk through native bush and clouds of geothermic steam, you’ll discover why this land has inspired myths and legends. Once used by Māori warriors to heal their battle-scarred bodies, visitors now use the nutrient-rich waters and mud to ease inflammation and arthritis, as well as rejuvenate the skin. This unique blend of awe-inspiring power and natural healing properties is a thing of cultural legend — having been used for over 800 years.
The website features photos of a loving, mud-smeared couple embracing in a muddy pool. Such fun they are having! Teresa was…not convinced.
“I could not imagine anything worse than getting hot mud into all kinds of crevices,” she opined, delicately.
Now, according to my intensive Internet research on the subject, the minerals and volcanic residue in the mud are anti-bacterial. However, while mud baths do no harm, there’s not much scientific evidence to back up the claimed health benefits. Except for stress relief, which is indeed significant as the muscles of the body relax into the soothing, hot mud. That relaxation was clearly not going to occur if I had to wrestle Teresa into the sulphuric soup and struggle to hold her down while she wriggled about. So we gave it a miss.
Whakarewarewa Living Maori Village and Thermal Park
Just on the outskirts of the town of Rotorua is Whakarewarewa, home of the Tūhourangi Ngāti Wāhiao people, who built their homes in the midst of a thermal hot springs several hundred years ago. For the past 200 years, they have opened their village to visting Europeans who came, curious about the bubbling pools, and the people who made their homes in their midst.
The self-guided walk through the park takes one through parts of the quiet little village (with signs requesting visitors not to intrude on the privacy of residents). Markers along the way explain the various uses of the bubbling pools — some are for bathing, hotter ones for cooking. Given Rotorua’s cool winter temperatures, I realized what an amazing discovery these hot pools must have been to the first tribes to arrive in the area. Hot water ready at your doorstep, every day of the year!
Early on, the village realized they had something special for visitors. In the 1800s a tradition developed for tribal women to guide foreigners through the thermal wonders of the wider area. The museum next to the village does not explain why it was the women who guided. Perhaps the men were busy with farming and other more steady work, perhaps guiding tourists was beneath the status of men, or perhaps women learned English more readily? Whatever the reason, women guides became well reputed in the area, increasing the tribe’s income, and ultimately the status of the women, who became quite revered, even famous.
Although the tourist trade allowed the tribe to prosper, contact with outsiders brought in diseases. Influenza, measles, and other epidemics wiped out a quarter of the tribe in by 1900. Meanwhile, court rulings stripped 83% of the Tūhourangi Ngāti Wāhiao people’s traditional land away from them. The New Zealand government even sought to regulate guiding in those years. During this contentious period, the state wanted to ban women from guiding altogether, though they persevered, and the tradition of women guides continued well into the 20th century.
Today, as well as guided tours, the tribe offers cultural experiences, a small museum, and a gift shop. But, one would hardly describe this little village as prosperous, compared to the shiny downtown streets of Rotorua right next door, with its chic restaurant district and well-manicured parks. As we have heard, again and again since arriving in New Zealand, “poverty remains a persistant problem among the Māori…”
Craters of the Moon
Just north of lake Taupō, Craters of the Moon takes visitors on a walk through a very different landscape. No bubbling pools, just steaming ground on a wide open landscape. The heat destabilizes the surface, so that over time, here and there it has collapsed into craters, large and small. A wooden walkway runs through the park. Signs along the route warn visitors not to step off the path, because the ground might disintegrate right beneath your feet.
It’s an eerie feeling, to put your hand on the ground and feel the heat rise up. Other signs informed us that just 10–30 cm below the surface the temperature is more than 98 degrees Celcius in places — just shy of boiling. That means the plants that grow here are well-adapted to a hot climate, with tough, heat resistant leaves and roots. Some mosses that thrive inside the craters are usually found in hot, tropical climates.
Right next to the park is a geothermal power plant, which pumps surface water underground, generating steam and turning turbines for the town of Taupō. From the thermal park we could see the gleaming metal pipes in the distance. Geothermal power provides about 20% of New Zealand’s power these days, with the potential for much more. Especially in an era of climate change, there’s great potential for the country to transform into a net-zero nation through the natural power of the earth.
Walking through these three parks fills me with a kind of reverence for the earth — to feel the hot magma beneath our planet’s skin makes it seem alive, in a way that’s both frightening and exhilarating. The Māori have their own story about this tremendous force, as told here on the Hell’s Gate website:
Rūaumoko is the God of earthquakes, volcanoes and seasons. As the son of the sky father, Ranginui, and the earth mother, Papatūānuku, his legend begins with their separation. Rūaumoko was taken by his mother to keep her company in a world below our own. The gift bestowed on him was fire, to keep them both warm. It is said that with every movement he makes, Rūaumoko’s heat boils the earth above.
I feel Rūaumoko in the heat beneath my feet. There have been seventeen episodes of volcanic unrest in New Zealand since 1872. Most recently in December 2019, 22 people lost their lives and 25 others were seriously injured as a result of the eruption of the nearby Whakaari volcano (White Island, just off the coast), while it was being visited by tour groups.
What about Taupō itself? What would happen if it were to erupt? As this helpful website, below, explains: “Most of the North Island of New Zealand would be covered in sulphurous ash that would kill everything. There would have been a few days’ warning, but not enough capacity to get everyone off the island in that time. The North Island of New Zealand would be suffocated under a thick blanket of smoke and lava. Chunks of rock and ash would rain down from the sky, likely causing more tragedies”
So…not good. But, the same website optimistically adds: “The 2020 paper published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters put the annual odds of such an eruption occurring over the next 500 years between 0.5 and 1.3 per cent. The magma needs more time to build up before there is likely to be superimposition.” They conclude, however, that a lot more work needs to go into the science of monitoring Taupō.
Just to unravel the math: a 1% annual chance of an eruption in the next 500 years would means every year there is a one-in-a hundred chance. Which is a little less comforting. Rūaumoko remains unpredictable.
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Next up: attempting to climb a frozen volcano in wintertime. Not my best idea.
If you missed my previous stories of New Zealand, here they are:
And, here is my new travel book, ready for preorder!
