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May 19, 2006

Burping Ground

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Continuing with the idea of the "new country" and changing landscape - here's some more. You think its a fog? Mist? Clouds? Smoke? No! Its steaming hot pools near to Rotorua.

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There's plenty of volcanic activity around and a lot of maori stories tell about a vicious monster underground exhaling all these fumes. It stinks like hell (right, isn't hell supposed to stink of sulphur?)

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Rotorua is one of the first maori settlements in NZ and I found it rather surprising. The whole place stinks like rotten eggs and the ground is very unstable. There were major volcano eruption and fatal lake explosion as recent as 1886! Why on Earth anyone would choose to live there?

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But obviously, it was a good place to settle. When maori arrived to NZ, they didn't have good clothing, so steaming hot pools gave a lot of oportunities to have warm baths, heat up houses and even cook their meals in boiling water! Nevermind the smell.. :)

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We had a stinky bath too, it felt so good! The major problem with living here is that the houses are very poorly built and don't have central heating (thanks to British heritage, I guess.. :) Many times we wondered why there's so few saunas in this place, it would make a whole lot of difference to have one place at home that is really warm! We didn't mind leaving Rotorua... And got to see yet another amazing waterfall on our way.

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Posted by gkligyte at May 19, 2006 10:28 AM
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