Hells Gate

May 30
After our unsuccessful trip to see Geothermal activity and with some advice we went to 'Hells Gate'. This reserve was formed over 10,000 years ago as a series of geothermal eruptions when ancient lakes drained to form Lake Rotoiti and Lake Rotorua. The removal of water caused faulting of rocks allowing violent escapes of steam, gases and hot fluids. The heat source here is only 1.5-2km below the surface - this is very close. (and lots of crazy people live here!)
We walked round and passed many bubbling mud lakes with the odd mud volcanoe and lots of steam. This place stinks of Sulphur.

Mud Volcano

Bubble, bubble, toil and trouble.

We then found the Skyline Gondola and went up a nearby mountain. Apart from the great view the main aim to go up there was to come zooming back down on a Luge.

Not a good look but great fun!

As elegantly shown by James in pic.
This was great fun. There were 3 tracks - the scenic, intermediate and advanced. We did have these tracks to ourselves, until a bus load of Koreans arrived! For this great activity we invented our own head cam. Using our head torch, we managed to strap our camera to our forehead and kind of successfully videoed our trips down. One shows James successfully crashing into the barrier at the end of the run.

Rotorua, New Zealand