#31 - Waterfalls, Geothermals, and Geysers

The Rotorua and Taupo areas of the North Island are known for beautiful lakes, waterfalls, geysers, bubbling mud pools, and geothermals.  They are sculpted out of volcanic activity that are thousands of years in the making.

We went to Wai-O-Tapu to see some of this geothermal activity and timed it so that we’d see the Lady Knox Geyser erupt.  Normally geysers do their “thing” whenever they want, but at this particular site they force the geyser to go off at 10:15 AM every day.  That sounded a bit touristy but we were curious as to how you can mess with Mother Nature in such a way.

As the story goes, the first open prison in NZ was established at Waiotapu.  They would wash their clothes in the hot water that comes up naturally from all the springs in the area.  A surprise was in store when they mixed soap with the water and found that the spring bubbled and erupted.

Today they use that knowledge to entertain us tourists.  So promptly at 10:15 they began a lecture about how this works and did a demonstration.  Sure enough, shortly after the guide poured some soap into the cone of the geyser it started to steam and hiss.  And then more huffing and puffing, until within a few minutes the water shot up to about 50 feet.

The brief and simplified scientific explanation of this is that the molecules of the surfectant (soap) wiggle their way in between the water molecules which allows the water that is boiling beneath the surface to instantly turn into steam.  The steam then forces the water to shoot upwards, producing the eruption.

Before soap was added

Soap added and foaming and bubbling starts 

She’s all systems go 

The forceful eruption was a crowd pleaser

For a more natural experience, I went to one of the facilities that channels the boiling water coming out of the earth into natural rock pools which they control at different temperatures.  So you can go from a warm soaking bath to a screaming hot one, and for the mentally insane they offer an icy cold plunge pool as well.

Sorry, no pictures of me in pools.

There are many fabulous waterfalls in the Rotorua and Taupo area.  The Huka Falls beckoned to us.  As we floated gently along the Waikato River in our boat, we could begin to hear the Falls long before we could see them.  It’s hard to miss the sound of nearly a quarter million liters of water  being forced from an area normally 100 meters wide into a gorge only 15 meters wide.  The flow rate of water coming over these Falls would fill an Olympic pool in just 11 seconds.

Huka Falls

Impressive!