AAA Traveler - Winter 2020 - Cover3

ROAD LESS TRAVELED

TRAVELER
WINTER 2020

EDITOR

Kristy Tolley
ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Janean Flowe
SENIOR DESIGNERS

Amanda Johnson
Morgan Keith
GRAPHIC DESIGNER

Rachel Hawkins

WAI-O-TAPU THERMAL WONDERLAND
Set in the heart of the New Zealand's Taupo Volcanic Zone, Wai-O-Tapu
Thermal Wonderland is a landscape of psychedelic colors emerging from
steamy mists from a geyser spewing superheated water from deep within
the earth, and pools of bubbling mud emitting primordial burps. It's one
stop on the Thermal Explorer Highway, which meanders across New

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Darcy Grimes
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Zealand's North Island.
Covering some seven square miles, Wai-O-Tapu ("sacred waters" in the

Julie Elberson

indigenous Maori language) is covered with collapsed craters, boiling mud
pools and fumaroles (vents where steam escapes from underground).
The star attraction is the Champagne Pool, with its reddish-orange edges
lapped by steaming, bottle-green water. The largest spring in Wai-O-Tapu,
it's over 200 feet in diameter and about 200 feet deep. While it appears

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to be boiling, the bubbles are actually caused by carbon dioxide. Crossing
the pool on an elevated boardwalk feels surreal, as the mists part to reveal
one otherworldly panorama after another. Overflowing water from the
Champagne Pool creates the Artist's Palette, a pool where many types of

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minerals, chemicals and gases mix, resulting in different colors every day.
Roto Karikitea, also known as Devil's Bath, is the color of a neon green
highlighter, the result of water mixing with sulfur.
The Lady Knox Geyser erupts at 10:15 every morning, activated by a
deposit of soap, shooting steam 30 to 60 feet in the air. (The area was once
part of a prison camp, and prisoners discovered the action of the geyser
while washing their clothes.) Concentric circles of glossy, quivering, belching
mud make up Wai-O-Tapu's mud pool. Since each viscous whorl shimmies
and vibrates until the heat below causes it to explode, don't wait for the
burp to look. The trick is to stare at one spot until it erupts; otherwise you're
always just missing the action.

- Ellen Albanese

©2020 AAA Traveler is published by
AAA Carolinas. Reproduction in whole or in part
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AAA Traveler - Winter 2020

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