First part of Day 2: Wai-O -Tapu

Arghh. I'm sleepy. I've been trying to find out where the Earth is for the last two days and have almost succeeded. Sha has got her Australian PR!! Well done Sha. I've been trying to work out whether she now needs a visa to go to New Zealand. According to the official website you don't need a visa if you are a permanent resident of Australia or .... personnel at the "Black Birch Astrometric Observatory" or .... a member of "Operation Deep Freeze". This was rather intriguing. The only websites that I can find about the observatory says that it closed ages ago. However, there is a pdf that I found that says that the observatory is operated by the US Naval Observatory for US stategic and nuclear weapon systems. However, the head of the US apparently says that it is an innocent scientific endeavour!! However even that pdf says that it closed in 1991.

"Operation deep freeze" is easier to find. It even has a wikipedia page. Apparently it's the code name for a series of US operations in Antarctica.

Anyway, Sha can come into New Zealand without getting another visa!! At the start of day 2 in New Zealand, we woke early and drove North toward Rotorua. We stopped at Wai-O-Tapu which is a place that I've been wanted to visit for ages. It's so beautiful. We arrived just before the geyser erupted. It erupts every day at 10:30am and I had spent most of the car ride trying to work out how it knew about the clocks changing to summer time. The answer is that a chap turns up and throws a bar of soap into the funnel. Then it erupts. Actually he was very insistent that it wasn't soap, but something much more eco-friendly. It was very impressive and we got covered in hot, steamy, soapy water. The water went up 20m or so and lasted an hour.

Then we went to find the bubbling mud pools. Wow!! That was my favourite bit, but Sha made rude comments about the view and the smell and didn't take many photos. It was dramatic! Finally we went around the park on a stunning walk (that lasted an hour or so). The views were incredible. There were different colours in the rocks, water, steam everywhere you looked. Amazingly there was some wading birds that lived in the steaming water. I stuck my finger into a pool and I can confirm that the water is very close to 100C.

I'd better stop. I have to give a 45 minute talk at Sydney Uni tomorrow and I haven't started it yet.