Volcanic Landscapes of Rotorua and Wai-o-tapu, New Zealand

10-07-2018

New Zealand

geothermal, new zealand, photo journal, photography, rotorua, travel, volcanoes, waiotapu

2 minutes Read (About 359 Words)

This is my photo journal exploring the volcanic and geothermal landscapes on New Zealand’s North Island. It was otherworldly in both sight and smell.

My first stop was Rotorua, nicknamed the sulfur city for it’s many active steam vents, hot pools and sulfur dyed lake shores. The whole city smelled like sulfur pretty much everwhere you went.

There was a park in Rotorua there called Te Puia which had a ton of hotspots like this

Also some interesting landscapes with gysers and steam spewing out of rock features

A view over the park and some of the city. It was common to see steam rising from all over the place

The next day I headed over to a place called Wai-o-tapu, an even more unique geothermal hotspot about an hour and a half outside of Rotorua:

Earth's so hot, making that mud pop

Sulfur deposits like this everywhere (and with it unfortunately came the smell of rotten eggs)

Some of the rocks had this really interesting texture, it was like reptile skin. Probably formed from some kind of water erosion with mineral deposits?

Spooky volcanic skull lake?

Or strange green lake?

Colorful hot spring, although you probably wouldn't want to bathe in this, apparently the orange comes from an arsentic compound

There were large swaths of boiling water like this all over Wai-o-tapu, often with different colors of green, yellow, orange, brown, like someone spilled paint in a lake

It was a fascinating place to explore for a couple of days, I’ve never seen landscapes like that before. Although I won’t miss the sulfuric smell of rotten eggs.