On Thursday we said good-bye to Taupo and our kindly hosts, starting early in order to do some sight-seeing on the way. We visited the Wai-ora Valley, which is parallel with the Geyser Valley, but has only lakes and pools of different colours instead of geysers, and seems to be full of small extinct volcanoes. From there we went to the gigantic fumarole called “Karapiti,” which means Screeching. It is a most appalling phenomenon, this aperture of Prince Subterranean Wind’s. The outlet is about 20 by 14 inches in diameter, but the pressure is 16Olbs to the square inch, and the temperature of the steam is 225 degrees. Our driver threw a paraffin tin on to the hole and it was instantly whirled up into the air as if it had been a feather, and so were sticks and stones, while a penny flew up and spun in the air like a top. It was more uncanny than the one at Waimangu, though the screeching of that was quite bad enough.
In the afternoon we drove to the Aratiatia Rapids, which are very fine indeed, a mass of blue waters rushing down to tumble in foamy cascades over the rocks, a fall of 175 feet, with 300,000 h.p. The banks of the river are densely clad with native bush and flowering manuka, and the beauty of the copse with the sun finding its way in among the trees is by no means the least part of the attraction of Aratiatia.
The swimming-bath at Wairakei is the prettiest and by far the jolliest of all. It is merely a part of the hot stream fenced in, with five-foot boards, and both banks have been left in their original state, willows and brambles, ferns, briar-roses, jessamine, and honeysuckle all growing together in fragrant beauty. On one side of the stream there is a primitive dressing-shed, with a sort of platform and steps down into the water which is at that point about five feet deep. And inside the enclosure there is a cold-water bath always flowing from a watercourse, so that those who like it can have both hot and cold plunges at once.
Friday morning at eight o’clock found us breakfasting under some trees on the way back to Rotorua, but we were returning by a different route, via a place called Orakei-korako. Up till now we had been blessed with brilliantly fine weather, but there was a chill in the air that morning, and the sky looked rather ominous as we sat in our little retreat a few yards from the road. The buggy was without a hood, and Captain Greendays, afraid of our getting wet should the weather change, suggested our returning to Wairakei and postponing our journey till next day. But Mrs Greendays laughed at his fears, quoting some of her friends and the, of course, perfect guide-books that scorned even, the suggestion of bad weather in New Zealand. And so we continued our drive.
