Rotorua: Boiling Mud And Urban Volcanoes

We’ve read several times that as you approach Rotorua, it’s possible to smell the town before you ever see it. Well it’s not strictly true but the pungent odour of sulphur hits us as soon as we open the car door and, as we are to discover, permeates through this most unusual city 24/7. The smell emanates, of course, from the excessive geothermal activity taking place just below ground level – the whole city of Rotorua is built over a caldera formed during a volcanic eruption around 240,000 years ago, and there is certainly no mistaking the level of activity still present today. It’s impossible to miss, in fact.

But before we head southwards to Rotorua on our last day on the Coromandel Peninsula, we take a drive along a stretch of its amazing eastern coastline, discovering giant deserted beaches (Otama), picturesque little towns (Tairua) and sumptuous scenery, ending up eventually at Hot Water Beach, where the thing to do is to dig a hole in the sand until you reach the water heated by geothermal activity and then sit in your own hand dug hot tub. Unfortunately the timing of the tide isn’t quite right (the lower the tide the better) and despite our best efforts with the spade we only hit a seam of cold sea water.

En route to Rotorua we pause at the self-styled “Mural Town” of Katikati, not because of the murals but more because that naughty Hyundai of ours decides that the Dolce Cafe on the High Street looks too good to pass by, but as it happens the murals are indeed an interesting distraction from the highway. As is the cafe.

And so to Rotorua, nicknamed both “Sulphur City” and “Rottenrua” due to that smell, where the geothermal activity is in no way restricted to the enclosed pay-to-visit centres, in fact there is evidence all around town. Follow the footpath trail near Sulphur Point and gurgling fumaroles pump steam from boiling pools just the other side of a small wooden fence. No matter which direction we look, clouds of steam are drifting into the air or being carried across town by the wind. Urban volcanoes. Less than three kilometres beneath this city lies a giant lake of molten lava, little wonder then that extreme heat escapes from so many fissures in the Earth’s surface.

The action is even more intense inside the wonderfully named Hell’s Gate geothermal reserve where the bubbling soundtrack is louder, the sulphur scent stronger and the scars on the surface more extreme. There’s definitely weird stuff happening just below ground level here; some of the water in these raging pools reaches a temperature of 120C even above the surface, having hit 350C or more underground. We indulge – of course we do – in the hot water pools and the mud baths, but the real lasting impression is of the lengthy walk around the natural cauldron and its unusual sights and sounds. Incidentally, many of the mud pots and boiling pools here were named by none other than George Bernard Shaw, who was evidently just as impressed as we are. How “not bloody likely” is that.

Mud bath and mineral pools

Sulphur crystals and hot pools

A mere 400 yards or so from our apartment here is another geothermal centre, commercially known as Te Puia but with a full name of Te Whakarewarewa, where the valley is filled with billowing steam, spouting geysers and untouchably hot rocks. The more we explore Rotorua the more we come to appreciate just what an unusual town this is. Within Te Puia, the main geyser Pōhutu duly obliges and provides an exciting display powering boiling water around 30 metres skywards as we watch on from a safe distance.

OK, now amuse yourself with a pronunciation test. The real full Maori name of this geothermal valley is, wait for it….

Te WhakarewarewatangaoteopetauāaWāhiao.

Good luck with that one.

Te Puia also serves as a fascinating Maori cultural centre where students learn traditional skills and arts and crafts, including wood carving, bone-and-stone carving and weaving, all funded entirely by the reserve’s visitor fees. There’s also an opportunity to enjoy a “hāngī” lunch. A hāngī is a traditional Maori oven, which basically entails burying the prepared food just beneath the ground, where the intense heat and swirling steam cooks meals thoroughly in a couple of hours. Originally constructed from woven foliage, the centre now uses metal containers for burying the food, which probably detracts somewhat from the original earthy flavours but it is nevertheless still seriously delicious.

Maori culture

Friday, and a third geothermal reserve twenty minutes out of town, one which just goes to show that even on a third day of exploration these places can still surprise and astound. This time it’s Wai-O-Tapu, where the most renowned phenomenon is the Champagne Pool, a large hot water lake given a whole range of startling colours by different mineral deposits ranging from brilliant orange to bright pink and dreamy turquoise. Shifting sunlight, changing winds and the level of cloud cover all help to ensure the colour patterns on the lake are ever changing – even the staff on site don’t know what to expect each day. It really is a remarkable sight, the minerals creating this amazing kaleidoscope include gold, silver, mercury, sulphur, arsenic, thallium and antimony.

Steam emanating from the lake drifts across the valley in the densest of clouds, sometimes forming a white-out which leaves us unable to see anything at all and needing to stand still until it passes, breathing in the heavy sulphur odours and feeling the intense moist heat of this eerie, swirling mist. 

Lady Knox lives here. That’s the name given to a spectacular geyser which, even though it (she?) erupts from its own energy several times each day, is given a forced eruption daily at 10:15 by using naturally occurring minerals to produce a crowd pleaser of a display. We weren’t too keen on the “forced” bit but there’s no denying it’s a spectacular sight.

Elsewhere in Wai-O-Tapu lakes of crazy colours lie between banks of sulphur crystals and land coral, mud pools boil and bubble and ethereal sounds like growling monsters issue from the bottom of deep craters. Trees and shrubs in some areas glow with an improbable golden hue, shining as if illuminated from within or lit by offset lighting – we think at first it must be airborne sulphur deposits but learn subsequently that it is in fact an algae which thrives in very high temperatures. Yet another weird feature in this thoroughly unworldly place.

There’s been something odd about staying in Rotorua, on many levels just an ordinary town with shopping malls and an “Eat Street” full of bars, yet on another level sporting the highest concentration of geothermal activity we have seen anywhere. Seeing the two side by side verges on the surreal.

Urban volcanoes. Boiling mud. Rainbow lakes. Sulphur crystals. McDonalds, Burger King and Wendy’s. And everywhere stinks of sulphur. What an unusual town.