Geothermal Wonderland

A day trip around Rotorua (sister city to Beppu). The Wai-o-Tapu 'geothermal wonderland' and the volcanic Waimangu Valley, where an 1886 eruption obliterated nine Te Arawa villages. There are bubbling mudpots, hot springs which stain the ashy clay vivid yellow and green, and pools of intense green, blue and red. Years of deposits build up into intricate sinter terraces. At the Lady Knox geyser (they say Guy-zur here), a man throws soap flakes down its maw in order to ensure it spouts on time at quarter past ten every morning.

Tongariro Crossing

The Tongariro Crossing, widely-hyped (believe the hype) as New Zealand’s finest day tramp, starts off where the Kepler left off, above the bushline at about 1000m, and climbs to 1880m or so, up lava flows, across crater beds, and past lakes and fumaroles. The bus comes to pick us up at 6.30am outside the fairly unpleasant Go-Global Backpackers. There are two other English blokes there waiting with me. One of them is coughing like a proper consumptive and wearing jeans, and his mate tells him he looks dressed for a hike all the way to the shops.

If you don’t enjoy reading rambling tramping monologues as much as I like writing them, click on the links for the pictures, or even better just go straight to the pictures.

It’s a bit of a circus at the Mangatepopo car park. Even this late in the season there are a couple of hundred people attempting the walk. Three have died on the crossing this year, the driver tells us, but people who were unprepared on days worse than this, which is an unusually lovely day indeed. We quickly catch sight of the massive crags of Ruapehu, the highest of the three major volcanoes, followed by the dimpled cinder cone of Ngauruhoe, and the broad and stumpy Tongariro.

The biggest eruption at Taupo was the one that created the crater which forms part of Lake Taupo. In 186AD, New Zealand, anxious to announce its existence to the inhabited world, blew 24 cubic kilometres of ash and debris out of Taupo into the air, clouding the world’s skies for several days, which was noticed (and therefore dated) in both China and Rome, but no-one was sent to investigate for more than a thousand years.

The walk starts off easily beside a stream and waterfall, through yellowy tussocks, at the end of which is a crater bed and then a steep climb up a chunky lava flow to the side of Ngauruhoe. Nothing grows here, and any stone you grab onto to help you up is hard and scratchy volcanic rock. It takes about forty minutes to climb, and it’s known poetically as ‘The Devil’s Staircase’ (I wonder what the Maori for ‘bastard steep hill full of sharp bits’ is?). At the top is the side path off to ascend Ngauruhoe’s dimpled summit, which is stained red, yellow and white with salts, and if you look very hard you can see it smoking slightly.

On the way up Taranaki’s cone is visiable all the way over on the west side of the island, peeking above the clouds. All four mountains used to live happily together round here until Taranaki started hitting on Tongariro’s girlfriend. Taranaki beat Ngauruhoe in a fight, but the massive Ruapehu got the better of him, after which he ran away, carving out the Wanganui River behind him.

Even by midday, where the ground has yet to feel the sun’s light, ice crystals and thin crusts of rime persist. A man who did the Northern Circuit and missed the view yesterday has come back with his plastic bag for a look (he’s not stupid) and warns me where the ice is on a tricky bit of the climb.

The yellow, muddy bed of the South Crater follows, and then a further hike up leads to the summit of the walk at 1886m, at the ridge of the Red Crater, whose black black sides are stained with salty red like spraypaint. Immediately beyond, at the bottom of a steep scoria track, which I edge down nervously, are the resplendent Emerald Lakes, an unhealthy-looking green bordered with yellow, and several fine steaming fumaroles. As I walk across the Central Crater someone points out how great the view behind me is, and indeed it is, but within minutes cloud has obscured the view entirely and is creeping rapidly upon us. I start to frantically hope that my backpack is full of all the things that a bewildered seventy-year-old wouldn’t think to pack (rolls, bananas, scroggin, woolly hat; no USB key!) but it’s OK because the worst the cloud does is kind of obscure the view of the Blue Lake.

From there it’s a zigzag through tussock to the Ketetahi DOC hut where everyone hangs out and has their lunch. There’s no mileage in getting to the end too quickly because you’re only going to have to wait for the shuttle bus when you get there. I deduce that almost everyone is younger than me, and that everyone English is posher than me.

We cross the stream below the mysteriously steaming Ketetahi hot springs, which are off-limits. The National Park land was a gift from Ngati Tuwharetoa in 1887 to pre-empt development and preserve the ‘cultural landscape’.

And then we descend, seemingly endlessly, back to the pickup point. The track falls first through scrubby vegetation, and then into virgin bush proper, down your standard-issue DOC retaining steps: tramp-tramp-tramp-thump, tramp-tramp-tramp-thump. I get stuck behind a bunch of English girls, who despite having Latin A-levels don’t seem to be able to pronounce the name of the mountain they’re climbing up, and a kid who has his own personalised ‘Gap Year 06’ hoodie with his itinerary on his back (he’s been to Peru! He’s going to India!).

When the buses arrive, everyone crowds to get on so they can go home at 3.30, rather than wait on the 4.30 bus for the stragglers to arrive. Back to Taupo we go, but not before we drop the meatbombs off at the skydiving centre, to do what Taupo is after all there for. But this has been one of the most amazing walks I've ever done.

Beppu

A fantastic day out in Beppu, Kyushu's onsen (geothermal hot spring bath) capital. The Rough Guide is down on it and dead wrong — this place is fantastic, although you'd be lost without a Japanese speaker who can read a local onsen guide.

First stop is Ichinoide Kaikan. Order lunch and then head outdoors to their pools, where you strip off, scrub yourself all over and then sit in the warm water and look down the mountainside towards the sea. There are two sets of pools, male and female, and they switch them over every day to allow all a chance at each. The sulphurous water is milky and steams, and the lower pool is quite comfortably warm, though the upper pool is too hot to get into, even for the well-seasoned Japanese onsenite already relaxing in the water. Next to the pool they've built a steam room simply by sticking a wooden hut over a fumarole and you can move in close to the steam, or out out closer to the air, which on a sunny February day is just the right temperature for relief from the warmth.

Then we grab a taxi to the Shinon-ga Hama sand baths where you don a lightweight kimono and lie down on black sand warmed by geothermal water and the staff proceed to bury you in the sand — a row of entombed tourists like casketed Egyptian mummies, heads only showing, look out past the palm trees to the horizon on the inland sea. The weight of the warm sand is all-enveloping and towards the end of your allotted twenty minutes they pile yet more onto your chest. You can feel your pulse throb through your whole body from head to toe.

The main geothermal area is divided into nine jogoku or 'hells', each themed differently. Umi Jigoku ('sea hell') is dominated by a huge bubbling cauldron of boiling water and steam; Bozu Jigoku ('monk hell') has mudpots that throb upwards like the tonsured temples of buddhist monks. Yama Jigoku ('mountain hell') is a bit sadder, with a tiny zoo and a robotic hippo who rises from his submersed depression only when tourists arrive, to thrust his open jaw close against the wall of his pitiful pit and wait for hundred-yen bundles of potatoes to be thrown down his gullet. Everywhere steam rises from the hills, from pipes sticking up into the sky, from strange structures that look like oil-derricks, and frighteningly even from cracks and slabs in the pavement. A taxi driver tells us that for five thousand pounds you can get your house connected to the source of the hot water for life. Everywhere along the winding streets of Kannawa Onsen there are tiny private and public onsen, some free, some attached to ryokan, everywhere people soaking in the hot water.

The final hot bath (you have to do at least three in a day), Hyotan Onsen ('gourd spa') features a variety of indoor baths, one gourd shaped, one with a wooden bottom; a waterfall onsen, where hot water falls in spouts to pummel your shoulders into shape; and an outdoor pool (rotemburo) surrounded by trees and a rock garden, where you can again get into the warm water or sit on a rock in the slightly nippy evening air. Afterwards, a mini-banquet of sushi, noodles, chicken and blowfish awaits you on the low tables of the self-service restaurant.