Volcanoes, kiwis and quads

Not quite volcanoes, but almost. We went to the Wai-O-Tapu reserve and saw an erupting geyser (more on that later) and plenty of evidence that we were walking around an area which has been, and to some extent still was, active. But first about the geyser. When we read the guide book we were impressed that the geyser erupted exactly at 10:15am every day. I mean how did the geyser know what time it was? But it was a trick. Apparently the geyser would have erupted at 24-72 hour intervals naturally. But of course that's not regular enough to draw the tourists. So what they did was induce the eruption using soap (a surfactant). What the soap did was break the surface tension in the chamber of cooler (+90c) water which lay on top of a chamber of warmer water (+150c). Once the surface tension was broken, there was pressure created by the temperature difference - resulting in the eruption. Cheating. But impressive gushing of water up to 10m high anyway.

The rest of the park was more natural. As natural as pink, purple, emerald green, turquoise blue, light & sulfur yellow and bright orange sediments can be. By far the most impressive was the Champagne Lake where the bright orange layer of sediment was contrasted nicely against the white lake edge and emerald green bubbling lake. Beautiful! And then there was this one crater lake which was LIME green. Seriously - like someone squirted the ink from a fluorescent yellow pen into some pea soup (and no, I'm not taking any hallucinogenic agents, in case you were wondering). Certainly a weird experience, special to this area of New Zealand.

And special to New Zealand in general was our encounter with some kiwis. Finally, we got to meet the birds that the country is known for, that the people have been named after. We went to the Rainbow Springs Nature Park which also had a Kiwi Conservation Project. Although there are 20,000 North Island variation of kiwis, their numbers are rapidly declining due to the introduced predators, such as the possum (in particular), rats, cats and dogs (amongst others). Therefore this particular place hatches kiwi eggs collected from the wild and then releases them back into the nature once they are ready (into the area which they originated from, provided there are predator traps every 50m). We got to see the incubating eggs, a 1-day old trying to find its way out of the incubator and the "nursery" where they were weighed every day and fed a mixture of ox heart, fruit and vegetables (delicious & nutritious). But the best bit was seeing them live in open pens, just 1m away. In case you don't know what a Kiwi (bird) looks like, think of a chicken, then make it a bit bigger, then add some really fluffy soft brown feathers (almost down-like), then give it a really long beak, a relatively high backside and remove wings. If you went up in size past ostrich then you went too far. Well, that would be a moa, as tasty, but to see that you need a time machine. Right, look it up on Wikipedia to avoid disturbing nightmares. I don't think our trip to New Zealand would have been complete without seeing one, even if it was in a relatively sterile environment. And if you didn't notice it yet we did have a very nice dinner, with some very nice wine...

And next up was some action - quadbiking! We crossed farm land that that looked like it was pulled out from the Hobbiton (with cows and sheep), went up and down the green rolling hills, up dirt tracks, down dirt tracks, through a real proper dense dark rainforest full of tree ferns. Fantastic fun! (Apart from when I almost crashed into a tree). By the end we were completely covered in dust (from head to foot) but so exhilarated (and sore).

Harri's going for a comparison ride with a dirt-bike tomorrow morning. I might just soak my sore muscles in the hotel thermal pool.

ps. as a comparison to the possum point earlier. In OZ there are about 200 possums per hectare. In NZ, thanks Ozzies, there are about 1000 possums per ACRE.