Water - in various forms

STEAM
Rotorua has many visitor centres focussing on Maori culture. Again we tried to find a less commercial option and decided to visit the 'Whakarewarewa Thermal Village'.

For several generations this Maori village has invited in visitors as one of its main sources of income. The village is built on a geothermal site, which provides a number of problems and benefits. Geothermal pools with temperatures of 140 degrees C are used for outdoor cooking. Muslin bags of vegetables are dropped into the pool and fished out some minutes later when ready. Other meals are cooked underground  in pots or wrapped in foil.

Different areas of hot water are used for bathing. The people in this village bathe communally, twice daily, with social protocols used to preserve their modesty. The water is so hot that the baths have to be run about 2 hours beforehand and left to cool.

But the very active geothermal site creates other problems as steam vents can erupt anywhere - in a house or in a graveyard for example - resulting in abandoned houses or emergency steam vents added to graves. 

Our Maori guide showed us how the leaves of a specific plant are made into strands for skirts. This is an incredibly skilful task and involves the use of a mussel shell as a blade. 

On the outskirts of the village is a large geyser - the largest in the southern hemisphere. It doesn't keep to a precise time and so we had a very long wait before we were rewarded with an  impressive shot of water and steam. 

THE SWIMMING POOL
We were hot and sticky when we left the village in the mid afternoon, so we went for a swim in the blue pool baths in Rotorua - a quaintly old fashioned outdoor swimming pool recommended by friends.

THE LAKE
Our third watery activity was an early evening trip across Lake Taupo on a yacht once owned by Errol Flynn. We saw a modern Maori carving set into a cliff face overlooking the lake. 

THE RIVER
And we weren't finished there. We remembered the thermal pool in the river that we hadn't tried the previous day. We decided to have a sunset swim and found only a few other people using the pool. 

The experience was amazing. The river was lukewarm some distance from the thermal pool, but as we got closer it became warmer and warmer. The hot stream that entered the river was simply too hot to bear, but as it mixed with the river it cooled in an oddly layered kind of way. People found different places to sit or swim depending upon their tolerance to the temperature.

So that was four water-based activities in one day - and a perfect end to a perfect day - a dip in a steaming river as hot as a bath - as the sun set over the hills.