Geysers, bubbling mud pools and hot thermal springs confirm that Rotorua sits on the Pacific Ring of Fire.     The faint whiff of sulphur drifts in and out of your consciousness in varying degrees of intensity to remind you the ground you walk on is transitory.     That quote in the Auckland museum pops to mind again – civilisation exists with geological consent, subject to change without notice.    How many have thought, surely nothing will happen while we're here?   

We throw ourselves into this town which has built itself on drawing tourists to the geothermal sites, augmented with a bevy of extreme sport options .     Bungie (on a rope, in a chair, or a list of other crazy variations on the theme), a luge track, Zorbing (those awkwardly large plastic balls you climb into and roll down hills in) right down to mini putt has been jammed in to the large brochure displays hawking how to spend your time and dollars.      

We start with a glorious walk through the Red Wood forest – brought from California and thriving here.    From there, we take in two thermal areas and a farm to introduce us to the glories of sheep farming in NZ.     

The sheep were a happy calamity.     The parking lot was empty but for a handful of cars – then three buses of Asians (later to be clarified as Chinese, Korean and Japanese) arrived and the barn auditorium was packed.    Headsets provided for translation.       Sixteen varieties of woolly characters were shepherded onto the stage one at a time, up a ramp to a designated spot – a cup of food is the reward as our muscle-shirted host explains that breed’s attributes for wool or meat market .      The sheep stop and eat each other’s food, they pee as they are being talked about, they lay down, head-butt each other and fall asleep.   Dogs are brought in to demonstrate how they herd the sheep, but the herd-ees sleep through it and geese are used in lieu.      A few audience members are called up for different kitsch antics – I got the best one, given a big hot milk bottle with which to feed tiny baby lambs.     Awww.

The thermal areas are other-worldly.   As you drive closer, you see a dozen or so little plumes of smoke that look like campers are roasting marshmellows in there.      Not so. Steam coming from the many sulphur vents is 100 degrees C.   Walks in the woods are not recommended. Officials say follow the marked paths and don't deviate.

Saw two variations of geysers – one set that go off every 40 -80 minutes at its own volition.     The other, as the story goes, was near a jail a century ago where some prisoners were washing their clothes in a warm thermal spring .   One guy accidently dropped his soap into the pool and the geyser exploded – something about the chemical reaction set it off.    Now every day at 10:15 a park ranger comes to explain the geology of geysers and drops a packet of the right mix into its mouth and short minutes later it explodes.      Feels a little contrived and much less satisfying then the au naturel site.

The walk through mud pools, sink holes, toxic-coloured ponds and expanse of desolate expanse reminds one of the apocalypse – or just the power of nature.

We visited the Buried Village – The Te Waiora village sprung up in the 1800s like a Banff or Lake Louise as the base camp for treks across the hill to the spectacular thermal Pink and White Terraces.   

These limestone cascading tiers of thermal pools were other-worldly, with the volcanic 3-peaked cone of Mount Tarawera sitting off on the hilly horizon .     The indigenous Maori were the tour guides, while European missionaries ran the two small hotels.  

Days before the 1886 eruption, a phantom canoe was seen on the lake.     An old Maori leader foretold of unhappy gods bringing destruction.   A few days later, a Maori woman who guided the area noted that lake was 2’ higher than she had ever seen.      Later still, a dry river filled to overflowing, drained and filled again in short order, making people seeing it question their senses.      Nature gives warnings, but the trick seems to be to accept them.   

The village lost 120 people from the ash and smoke of the eruption that went over 9kms into the sky – unlike Pompeii lava wasn’t the issue.        The destruction of the pink and white terraces were sudden and violent.       

An optimistic side note – an English missionary designed the layout of the village, which was well defined with Larch fence posts brought from England .    After the deep blanket of ash settled, it was the tops of the fence posts that allowed people to find landmarks.      Years later, those fence posts sprouted and grew into enormous trees of over 40m high, only cut down in recent years.      The stumps of those trees were one of my favorite sites, as out of the sides of many of them, new sapling trees are rising again.