Hells Gate - A trip to Rotorua, New Zealand

On our recent trip to Australia and New Zealand, we got to spend a day at Hells Gate, a mini Yellostone of sorts with its own unique quirks which also happened to be a one of a kind "mud bath" and spa! 

When you get hot mud bubbling at 40C, the obvious thing a human being can do is to build a spa around it. It just so happens that this special mud full of sulphur may be bad for your lungs, but is great for your skin and joints! Yours truly had a rare experience sitting in the mud for 20 minutes followed by sititng in a spa for another 20 minutes. The mud bath left me weak for a few hours and smelling of sulphur for a few days, but given I am allergic to sulpha drugs, this experience did not leave me with any allergy symptoms. 

The place had very knowledgeable folks who answered questions related to the sulphur mud. Guess they have seen everything there is to see when it comes to side effects!

Enough about the mud! There was a lot more going on in this place. Rock formations made of sulphur, a mudcano, places that were simply out of this world and a beautiful lake which happens to be a crater. 

We had set up base camp as Lake Taupo and visited many places from there as day trips given we had 5 kids and a pregnant woman in our group. This was one perfect day trip. 

Here it is in pictures.. 

Apparently the whole place is full of mud baths. You buy a house, dig a little in your backyard and before you know it, you are a spa owner. 

One thing that we learned in this trip was that the Maori's showed up only in 1300's and the Europeans showed up a few hundred years later in New Zealand. Before 1300's it was pretty much uninhabited by humans. Given that we can see that no matter how long humans have stayed in a place, it takes only a few years for us to mess things up! 

The trails were beautiful and one walks a mile without realizing it! Then you get to see something like this.. 

The place was aptly named Hellsgate. This view was scary where it said "this can erupt anytime" and it looked like the place was going to blow!

That pit is huge and it was bubbling away! We got to walk through more greenery..

Catch glimpses of a "hot waterfall" which is apparently one of a kind!

and a few creeks which were "warm" as the cold rain water mixed with the hot water. 

We were told not to touch the water as there is no "guarantee" for the temperature in those creeks. So we made sure the kids stayed away from the creeks. What was more interesting was that there are some birds which literally walk on this hot surface and are picking something from this water and ground to eat! 

I could not even go closer to take this picture. Had to use the zoom at 400x. The bird was fearless!

We saw more out of the world scenery and most of them are visible only through a zoom lens maxed out. So if you go visit this place at least take binoculars with you!

This one location was surreal! It is a wonder that I got anything with all those fumes coming towards the lens.

The "mudcano" which is 5 meters in diameter and a "blow anytime" threat!

On the whole the place must be pretty unsafe and they keep moving the paths to accomodate the changing landforms. So hat's off to the owners for constantly adjusting the trails! 

What do you do with mud boiling and flowing over in different colors? 

The rest of the interesting photos go to the Gallery section of the website. You can catch them under landscapes. 

If there is one thing I will remember from this trip.. it is this!

A balding middle aged man goes into a mud bath with visions of Angelina Jolie walking out of a rejuvenating wax bath in Wanted.. and came out of the mud bath looking like.. his usual self! 

It did feel good, for a good four days after this!

Strongly recommend this to guys and girls who visit Lake Rotorua! 

Like they say in India, "paisa vasool"!

A visit to Ballarat

The first time I knew that a place called Ballarat existed was in 10th grade. It was mentioned in a Sherlock Holmes story. All I knew in those pre Wikipedia days was that Ballarat was a place where lot of gold was found and many folks got rich in the "gold rush" in Australia. 

We did visit the place once in 2004 on our first ever Australia trip. Jr. was too small to remember anything and the little one wasn't born yet. So on this trip, we did an all day trip to Ballarat. They had also added a light and sound effects show in the night in the recent years and we stayed for that. We left Melbourne after breakfast and returned at midnight on what was definitely a day well spent.

Ballarat has a few streets preserved in the Victorian era. We have visited a similar gold rush town in California a few years ago called Columbia. Ballarat is a large scale version of this. There are folks walking down the streets (all actors) in ancient clothes, stores that sell ice creams of a distant era, buildings and facades that look like sets but are for real, candle makers, horse buggies, bowling alleys that take you back in time.. 

It is a wonderful experience trying to connect to a past and this place does give you that experience in a very nice way. The guy who did the musket firing is apparently a Ballroom dancer who does this as a part time job or so he told me.  All the actors and store folks who do demonstrations are nice and polite which makes you wonder where our level of politeness has gone with time! 

The sound and light show was interesting. The  quality of it was not bad, but it needs to be edited a little better to avoid long pauses between acts. It was not as good as a Hollywood production but a great attempt at getting close to one. It was interesting for one reason. I never knew that the Australian independence movement of sorts was started in Ballarat by the miners trying to get rights from the British authority. Never knew anything about the "Blood on the southern cross"! It was a really great history lesson!

The kids did enjoy the light and sound show. But what fascinated them the most was panning for gold. They got really furstrated after 20 minutes of hard work trying to find a spec of gold. They threw their instruments down and walked back disappointed. 

They were treated instead to a museum on Soverign hill where large gold nuggets were on display. Seeing all that gold made the girls happy. It is only a question of time before they grow up and seeing is not going to be enough. If my father in law is any guide, I should start robbing banks soon so in a few years the girls can have all the jewelry they want.

On an entirely side note, we had to wait for 4 hours between the morning tours and the light show at night. So we decided to go around "Downtown Ballarat" which boasted some really old buildings, a great town center space, 4 Thai restaurants, Thai kickboxing exercise places, Thai travel places etc.. within 2 blocks (let's just say the Thai's have taken over Ballarat or so it appears) and a Pizza Hut right next to Soverign hill with large pizza's for 5 Aussie dollars including breadsticks and soda!  Still cannot believe how good that pizza was and how cheap it was!

Here is Ballarat in pictures.. 

 

Mud roads with only horse carriages going through... a Bowling lane with wood balls that for some strange reason reminds me of Angelina Jolie (hey.. different things bring different memories to the foreground!)

Plates and other metal ware made in front of your eyes using methods from the late 1800's! 

The nice lady who poses for us (guessing she is also a ballroom dancer? like the guy with the musket)

Ladies in costume.. everywhere..

Candles, soaps, candies.. all made old school way, in front of your eyes. It was interesting for everyone.

Horse buggies ! They also had a studio where the entire family could pick costumes from that era and take a group portrait.. but it was booked for the day and we missed an opportunity. 

Clouds that made the place even more interesting..

Buildings that were surreal

and did we mention Gold! Gold! Gold! Had to get that photo as a mild sepia tone..

The kids were so sincere in their search for gold.. all of 20 minutes till they figured out that the miners were all idiots for wasting their time searching!

They had a show where a single bar of gold worth 160k $ was melted and poured into a mold. It was a nice demonstration of gold metallurgy. Brought back memories of sitting on the gallery seats writing notes in Prof. PM Prasad's class! 

For some strange reason, they had a bunch of domestic birds and animals on one side to try and show how things were hundred years ago.. The alpha turkey went and did a display for us..

but what caught my attention was the sparrows. There were thousands of them everywhere. In the vents, inside the little buildings. Looked like a sparrow invasion of sorts in the place. They were fearless too. One of them ate ribbon pakoda and thenkuzhal right from my hands!

Then we went across the street to Soverign Hill and the gold museum. It was a place with a view!

both outside and inside

Some lucky bloke kicks the ground in frustration and finds this! Must have been something in those days with gold found a few inches below the surface!

These things are the size of my head or slightly larger.. so you can imagine the girls getting all wide eyed!

An old hotel in downtown Ballarat.. 

and a more recent statue in the city center area.

The place seems to be getting a big time makeover. My BIL was giving me a lesson on how Australia is trying to bring up little cities as development hubs. IBM is going to be there big time in Ballarat apparently. Guessing that their cafeteria will have at least one Thai restaurant.

The place was beautiful. The stones were screaming for a HDR picture..

There were no pictures allowed in the sound and light show and that was a surprise given we are allowed to take all the photos we want in Universal studios. You will have to go experience that one for yourself.

If you visit Melbourne area, definitely worth a visit. Budget a day for Ballarat and the entire family will come home happy after experiencing something unique.

Wishes for 2014

2013 was a good year for this family compared to recent years. As a family, there were no major issues. Daddy Narayanan lost a molar tooth and cursed a few dentists to hell, but other than that it was a healthy year. 

Work kept the parents busy and the kids did well in school and their extra curricular activities

There are a lot of things to reminisce about in 2013, but they all pale in comparison to the last two weeks we spent in Australia and New Zealand, especially New Zealand.

We just got back home a few hours ago and the visuals from New Zealand are still coming up! San's parents, us, her sister's family from Melbourne, her brother's family from Seattle were all there. It was a group of 13 traveling around North Island for a whole week. If this world is gods work, then he was definitely doing overtime when working on New Zealand. 

We had a blast! 

Also we get to say Happy new year twice this year. Once in Auckland shortly after boarding the flight when all the air hostesses wore bright hats and came wished everyone.. and again tonight at Pacific standard time, because we gained 24 hours while crossing the International date line! 

There are more than 3000 pictures from the four cameras and three iPhones. Will post pictures soon...

Here's to a wonderful, healthy and properous 2014 from all of us!