Wednesday was a beautiful day weather wise, possibly the nicest of the trip to that point. We boarded a van about 9am for the drive to Wai-O-Tapu thermal wonderland. The drive was pretty scary as the van wasn't the nicest and our driver tail gated worse than I do (I am working on this). To make matters worse, Michelle's ear hurt like heck and her vicodin on an empty stomach made for a tough go.
Our first stop at Wai-O-Tapu was another crazy bubbling lake which entertained us for about 15mins until we had to rush off to watch the geyser blow at 10:15.
We must admit that we were a bit underwhelmed by the geyser. Maybe it was the fact that they pour soap in it to reduce the surface tension and cause it blow, we know they have a good reason for doing this, but it felt a bit canned nevertheless. Another possibility was this was our first full scale encounter with the American tourist crowd. Ouch! Lots of sandals with socks and fanny packs from that crew. Don't think we're trying to be better than anyone else, but if the Aymonds can represent when abroad why can't the rest of the over 50 set of traveling Yanks???
We spent the next couple hours hiking around and admiring all the different oddities. As you can see from the picture here, some of the mixtures of gases and minerals combine to give us some stunning colors.
Because we had to catch a bus home our last 15mins were a bit hurried, but all in all it was a really cool place.
The afternoon saw us call off the forest hike in favor of a quick curl and some rest for Michelle's aching ear. Our evening highlight was a trip to the Polynesian Spa. The spa is a public bath which has different kinds of pools and baths from 35c to 42c. There are two different types of baths - one that is slightly acidic and helps your aches and pains and the other is slightly alkaline and is good for your skin. Check out polynesianspa.co.nz.
We had a great evening chatting with some folks from Tazmania and comparing constellations. We found out that they have never heard of this so called 'big dipper', but they did show us the southern cross that is on the aussie and nz flags. We also found out that Orion is upside down and in the northern sky!
The waters at the spa have unusually high contents of certain minerals, and we found out an interesting effect of one of them when we got home.
I realized when we made it back that I never took off my ring, so now it was a dulled out cooper color, a long way from the silver of a few hours ago. Luckily this is my $10 Venice beach ring, so no worries.
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