Geothermal Parks & Sledging. (photos)

Champagne Pools (so called due to boiling water).
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For those of you that don't know New Zealand is a hot bed for activity.  Not just adventure activities like bungee jumping, but geothermal activities as well.  Rotorua is essentially one massive geothermal park.  This area of the north island sits in the crater of an old volcanic eruption, giving rise to many bubbling mud pools, superheated lakes and many other geological phenomena.  However, it wreaks of sulphur (rotten egg).  Chemistry lesson for the day: When elemental sulphur combines with water that creates a chemical reaction that releases heat, and if the circumstances are right can actually be so exothermic that it produces fire.  However, the sulphur present in these pools did not cause fire, it was only colloidal sulphur just releasing heat.  Ok, I'll take off my lab coat and goggles now.

Delicious Iron
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The geothermal park felt like you were going back in time, to be present when dinosaurs ruled the earth - give or take - the Jurassic Period.  The colours were spectacular.  Reds from oxidized iron, yellows and greens from sulphurs, blues from antimony.  A veritable chemical painting.  I loved every minute of it.  But, the pools here were too acidic and concentrated (not to mention hot, some were upwards of 150C) to swim in.

So, we needed a solution.  We found a public hot spring that we could swim in.  Kerosene Creek, here we come.  We sat in this thermal river for about an hour, just relaxing and enjoying the spa.  Moving upriver against the flow of water and around the waterfall.  Great way to spend and afternoon.  Post thermal spring we headed to a thermal campsite.  Because of all the volcanic activity in the area the ground is actually heated.  It was an unreal experience from camping on a semi-frozen ground several nights before.

Sulphur-licious
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This leads us into Sledging.  Sledging is a little hard to explain.  It's very similar to skeleton from the winter olympics in the way that you lie down on your stomach and hurtle down a "track".  Maybe this link will help.  Apparently I did the same sledging that was featured in the Amazing Race. The difference between skeleton and sledging is the fact that with sledging you're lying down on a floating 'raft' of sorts and your track is a whitewater river.  So, you're essentially going head first through Grade 4 whitewater rapids.  A-MAZ-ING!  Such a rush!  And you can actually maneuver into the bottom of the rapid where the forces are equal pushing you backwards and pushing you forwards.  So you actually sit in the raging rapid.  It's very surreal.  Such a unique experience.