Volcanoes and Hot Springs

I've continued travelling north and have spent the last week or so in North Island. I had a couple of days in Wellington seeing some of the sites there, then I travelled up to Tongariro in central north island. Here I spent 3 days doing another one of the great walks, called the Nothern Circuit. Again it was completly different from anyewhere else I've been in NZ as the walk was up around 3 volcanoes. The landscape was so varied it made for an interesting few days and was a good geology lesson for me. The first day of the walk went up one of the volcanoes, which still had snow on it, across craters, past lakes and vents of hydrogen sulphide. The second day was spent walking across the kind of landscape you would imagine is on the moon, dry, dusty land with strange shaped rock formations. The final day was through forest, up to more crater lakes and then followed a river and waterfalls to the end. The weather could have been better but it was still a really good walk.

From there I've travelled up to Rotorua, a town which is actually built in an ancient volcanic crater. Theres still a lot of thermal activity here, the town stinks of sulpher because of it but I've got used to that quickly. Today i've had a busy day doing a lot of the tourist things. I went to see an area of hot springs and lakes, where the hottest is apparently over 100'C. Decided to have a mud bath, followed by a cold shower and a natural spa. Suppossed to be very good for you, I'm not convinced it's had much of an effect but I enjoyed it. Also tried a bit of Maori wood carving, which just prooved to me good some of there art is as it was really difficult. Alkso went to the museum, which was eally interesting and I learnt a lot about the area.

Moving on again tomorrow, further north to Corromandel.