Another lovely sunning morning even though it is a bank holiday weekend, it is still a little chilly but the wind seems to have dropped so we set off for Waimangu which is a volcanic valley and is the only hydrothermal system that’s thermal activity can be pinned down to a specific day – 10 June 1886 when the volcano erupted. The good news is since this time the whole area has been monitored and recorded so over the last 130 years the effects of the volcanic eruption have been documented. The walk from the entrance to the lake is just over 4km but luckily there is a bus that will take you back to the top so you don’t have to do the walk back up hill! There have been both hydrothermal eruptions as well as volcanic, although the last volcanic eruption was the devastating one in 1886 that we saw the effects of yesterday, the last hydrothermal eruption was actually 1973. The last period of major activity was the hydrothermal eruption in 1917 when a number of the craters and lakes were created. Although it has been very active unti relatively recently, between 1900 and 1904 the Waimangu Geyser was the worlds largest known Geyser, erupting on a 36 hour cycle sometimes sending jets up to 400 metres. We walked all the way to the bottom visiting all the pools on the way, and actually seeing a hot waterfall that although not a very big drop was actually flowing quite fast and had a lot of steam coming off of it, there was also one pool that was such a vibrant blue colour it was stunning. This is known as Inferno Crater lake which scientists are still studying to try and understand the 5 – 7 week cycle of overflow and shallow. At the bottom we got on a boat for a 45 minute trip around the lake. Originally this area had 2 lakes which the Maori called Rotomakariri (Cold lake) and Rotomahana (Warm lake) which contained the Pink and White terraces, this changed after the eruption and the current lake is now approximately 20 times larger than the original lakes. The cruise was really interesting, in addition to the steam vents we actually sailed into the crater of one of the cones which is almost complete you could really see the outline of the rim as there is only one gap which is the entrance. There are a couple of islands in the lake, and apparently all the vegetation has been through seeding from birds as no human planting has taken place. It was all really interesting and once we finished the cruise we got on the bus for the ride back up to the top. As it was quite late we had a last look round then set off back to the hotel to relax and pack up ready for moving on tomorrow.
