The New Zealand that Trembles: Similar to most of the Pacific south seas or “Ring of Fire”, New Zealand is geologically very active. In some places the crust of the planet is pretty thin, especially in the Rotorua area in the north island. There no better evidence of this than the bubbling mud pools, very common steam jets emanating from the ground, and the occasional geyser spewing hot steam high into the air. Along with a few hundred other tourists we sat patiently waiting for “Lady Knox Geyser” to erupt at the designated !0:15 am time, wondering how mother nature could be so punctual and predictable to provide a geological show at the same time every day. Well, it was a bit anticlimactic to find out that the event was actually timed with a man-made initiation with a ranger dropping a small sack of surfactant (similar to soap) down into the geyser spout that reduced the surface tension of the cold water enabling the hot water below to spout up and out in a dramatic arc of steam, soap bubbles, and hot water! Apparently this action of soap to initiate the geyser was discovered by a group of convicts washing their clothes by the geyser’s hot water, as one intrepid inmate dropped his bar of soap into the geyser spout just to see what would happen - alas, the first manmade eruption of Lady Knox Geyser! The other part of the volcanic park was quite disgusting to the nose (hydrogen sulfide - “rotten eggs”) but astonishing to the eye because of all the multicolored crystals that had formed from steam and hot water leaching through the soil. it was a bit intimidating to walk on some of these areas and feel the heat in the ground.
Lady Know Geyser blows her top with a little help from the ranger and a bag of surfactant.
One of the many steam craters caused by hot water or steam leaching from the underlying ground and bringing to the surface all types of nasty minerals - sulfur, arsenic, magnesium, and more. You can identify some of the minerals by the color. NOTHING visible lives in this water - no plants, no animals - it is hot and noxious!
Not the best smelling place in the world unless you enjoy the enticing fragrance of rotten eggs (hydrogen disulfide), and certainly not a great picnic site.
This bubbling mud flat actually had a active gurgling that was pretty soothing in an unearthly sort of way. If you fell in this you would be instantly scalded and not long for this world.