In the traveller's life, the transition stages are numerous, a few moments of doubt are quickly driven away by times of intense emotions that remind us how privileged we are to be here. I never wondered before what would be the sensation to walk in another world. Now, I know.
Our first contact with this other planet goes through Te Puia. One of the 5 places in the world where it's possible to see natural geysers (the others are located in Iceland, in Kamtchaka (Russia), in the Yosemite park (USA) and in El Tatio (Chile)). The limestone plateau is swollen with 2 bulges. Chimneys that the subterranean pressure can be released through. But sometimes, as it's the case here, the outlet of the gases comes with a gush of water. The 10-meter-high main geyser gets all the looks and surrounds itself with steam. A natural wonder that regularly gushes out from the ground.

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The next day, we head for the thermal wonder of Wai-o-Tapu. A brief stop at the geyser that precisely triggers at 10h15 every day. How is it possible ? Actually, the geyser doesn't have a natural activation and the park's employee dips a piece of soap into the chimney and starts the geyser. Everybody is quietly sitting and looks at the show, dumbstruck.

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We go back to the Wai-o-Tapu park. The mixing of an important subterranean activity and a sustained acidic action gives an eerie atmosphere to this part of the world. Gaseous fumes which put up science-fiction scenery of a remote planet. The bowels of the earth spit its venom out, as a warning. And despite the hostility of the different suppurating injuries of the earth, that nature is weirdly beautiful. The colours perfectly match, the guttural sonorities of the silica mouths are diabolically appealing and the smoky evaporations smoothly wrap anybody that approaches it.
Here we are in this dangerously attractive world we swallow through all our senses. This kind of world we can't or don't want to leave. Intoxicated and pleased with that.
To understand the profusion of colours that emanates from the ground, a glossary gives the link between the colour and the chemical element. So, yellow corresponds to the sulphur, orange points out traces of antimony, white is similar to the silica, dark red is reserved for ferrous oxide, black expresses the presence of graphite or a carbon/sulphur mixture, purple symbolizes the manganese and light green shows the arsenic, and greener it is, more arsenic there is!
Listing all these chemical elements, we understand the area of Wai-o-Tapu concentrates a peculiar and inhospitable geothermal activity. Here, the different spots are calling the devil's house, the sulphur grottoe, the thunder crater, the devil's bath or the hell crater.
A few grottoes let a blackish liquid get out ; on the ground, small puddles of seething sulphur, the orange-edged champagne pool throws up a large steam cloud which, according to the wind, surrounds you and let you puzzled about the breathed residues.
I stop talking, let's go for the colours and smokes fireworks, let you delight in the eerie landscapes of Wai-o-Tapu.

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The highlight of the show : champagne's pool.

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