Wai-O-Tapu first and the Lady Grey Geyser at 10am when she is regualary coerced into performing for tourists with the use of some soap flakes. Still very impressive. This is a great site with mud pools, sinter terraces that look like rivers, bubbling pools with completely unncessary don't walk/enter signs. Sulphur crystal caves and whole bunches of nasty elements floating around. As a geologist I was very happy here. The non-geos seemed to be having fun too.After lunch we went to Waimanga on the way to Rotarua. This is a whole different kind of site and equally, if not more, impressive. The best bit of all was that there were only 4 people including us here that afternoon-couldn't believe our luck. June 10th 1886 the whole valley was wiped out in one fell swoop by geo goings on. Everything. No life left. This makes it a great study in recent time to see how fast an area can recover from a catastrophic event. To be honest you can bearly tell (okay the steaming pools, geysers, sulphrous fumes and smoking rocks are a bit of a give away that it's a long way from over) but now it is full of lush tropical vegetation and quite a lot of the fauna seems to have come back too. This to me, as a geo, was one of the most fascinating places I've ever visited. I could have spent days here quite happily.
Eventually Paul dragged me away (or my rapidly developing cold did) and we booked into the Top10 site in Rotarua (NZD26 a night). This place is quite odd. Once you've got over the hydrogen sulphide smell (and that takes I while I can assure you) it's quite the tourist town. Had a great meal in Zippy Central where they made the best honey, lemon and ginger drink-did more for my cold than anything I'd got at a chemist.
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