We went along the thermal highway. It is quite odd because as you go up the valley there are plumes of steam coming out of the ground, some really close to the road. There is a full Geothermal Power Station and the power company is now intending to buiild one in Argentina which has some similar geology.
NZ is on a plate rift and there is a band of thermal activity with hot springs and geysers. Many of the springs are brightly coloured with different minerals dissolved in the , yellow, green, blue , orange....The geysers occur where there are two underground pools over each other with a narrow connection. the top pool is cooler than the bottom which is superheated to sy 150C. periodically the surface tension holding the two bodies of water together breaks down so they mix and erupt as a geyser. At the Lady Knox geyser which has a natural periodicity of 24-72 hours the add a surficant at 10.30 every day to make a bankable tourist attraction. At the Maori theme park they have a pair of geysers with a natural periodicity of 40mins-2 hours which are less affectcted by the drought as more lowlying.
Ther are also quite amazing mud pools of which you can only really get the effect with sound as there is a regular quite pleasant plopping noise.
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