We checked out of the hostel fairly early (by our standards), got to Waiotapu around 945, bought breakfast and drove over to the geyser. I was curious how the geyser came to have such a precisely regular eruption time, and we soon found out. A few minutes before the geyser was supposed to erupt, a member of the Waiotapu staff came out with a small pack under his arm and gave a short, funny presentation of the geyser's history. Apparently, the "thermal wonderland" used to be a prison colony. The convicts, who had been set to work planting trees (now the world's largest manmade forest, right next to Waiotapu), discovered this hot spring and irregular geyser, and thought it would be a good place to bathe. To their surprise, shortly after they soaped up, the geyser blew!
Apparently the formation under Lady Knox geyser consists of two vertically stacked chambers of water. The lower chamber is superheated, but kept from boiling and erupting by the upper, cold chamber of water. Breaking the surface tension between the layers allows the chambers to mix and causes an explosion! A couple minutes into the talk, our presenter raised up the pack he had carried in, called it an "environmentally friendly surfactant", and threw it into the hole. As he spoke, the geyser began sudsing over like a overfull dishwasher. It was explained that the cone shape of the geyser is also artificial: the prisoners decided to stack up rocks around the geyser in order to get more height out of it. Shortly after throwing in the trigger, our speaker decided to clear out:
As promised, a couple minutes later, the geyser blew. Geysers are cool. No, literally - the water that sprayed down on us wasn't warm at all.
We hung around watching the eruption and taking pictures for ten or fifteen minutes and then decided, as the geyser continued to erupt, that we were fountained-out. And then, when we got back to the parking lot, disaster. The drive into the geyser parking lot had been a little noisy, and now we knew why -- flat tire:
Some teamwork ensued. A nail in the tire was the culprit. Fortunately, our Corolla came with a full-size spare, so driving on the spare all the way back to Auckland would be no problem. After the geyser, we spent a few minutes checking out the mud pools, and then hit the road back for Auckland. The drive was alright, but not as nice as the previous day's drive from Te Kuiti. I had hoped to visit the Museum of Transport and Technology in Auckland, but by the time we made it to the city, we had barely enough time to get lunch before heading back to the airport.
We went out to the Ponsonby neighborhood, which we had not previously seen. Unfortunately, there wasn't really any time for sightseeing -- we ate some Asian fusion food and immediately hit the road for the airport. Luckily, the rental car return is immediately adjacent to the international terminal, so there was no delay there.
I was pretty excited for our flight back to Sydney on Emirates; not only are they generally a pretty good carrier, but we were flying on a shiny new A380, the largest passenger aircraft in the world.
As we waited to board, I noticed the amusing departure status board at AKL:
The flight to Sydney was nice and uneventful. I watched The Hunger Games.
Damn, A380! I'll have to ask you more about that plane later. AKL is one of my favourite airports and I haven't yet had the pleasure of visiting since their upgrades for the Rugby World Cup.
ReplyDeleteA couple things to note:
-I'm down for a Lap of NZ. Hopefully MOTAT is on that list as they did recently redo their Aviation exhibit.
-Kumara fries are the best.