After my first deep night’s sleep in a while I woke for breakfast and then the Gentleman Friend and I made our way into town to find out about an afternoon trip to Waimangu, the valley left after the eruption of Mount Tarawera in 1886.
It was about a half hour drive away from town, and we were dropped off at the top of a stunning green valley filled with ferns and tree ferns. It would not have been surprising to see a pterodactyl fly across. The path was mostly down hill, and led past the most spectacular smoking lake which is the remnant of a recent eruption. It was large and smoke slid over its surface, while all around the shore were fumeroles belching white smoke from bare rocks or fern-hung crags. We came to the lake’s overflow and here the nature of the water became more evident as the stream was swift and smoking, the rocks and earth streaked with red and orange and unbelievably bright blue-green algae. Still further was the first of the terraces, where water flowed over a flat bit and dyed it many colours, from red and orange and brown to white and of course, where the water was cool enough, blue-green from algae. There were complex chemical formations in the water, similar to those I have walked across elsewhere, but here they had been formed within living memory. There were stalactites less than a century old. Later, on the biggest terrace, there was a signboard which described the changes in this terrace over the past decades and noted that it would become even more beautiful in the years to come. It made me think that it was like a gardener talking about trees coming to maturity, but this was geology and the garden was the earth.
There were two more lakes: one intensely blue one cupped inside a lava bubble, and a very large one speckled with black swans, geese and ducks. Then we were collected by a bus whose driver stopped at a point on the road that was clearly intentionally separated from where pedestrians could go as there were two angry, spurting geysers there, spitting and exploding from the rock with a roar.
I read an excellent article today about policewomen in Pakistan. Highly recommended.