Rotorua

The geyser throws water up to 30m around twenty times a day. Carving and weaving schools stand beside it and the work can be watched.

Minerals turn the pools green and orange, and each one carries a name. Off the boardwalk the crust is thin, and nobody steps beyond it.

Trees planted around a century ago now stand 60m tall. A walkway strung between them is lit after dark.

A welcome ceremony and performance are followed by food cooked in the ground. You are told beforehand that not smiling during the challenge is the courtesy.

A crater filled with water, with steam rising along parts of its edge. Floatplanes take off from it toward the volcanic island offshore.

A gondola lifts you up the hill and a wheeled cart carries you down a sealed track. Three tracks run at different grades, and the gentle one comes first.

Past the boiling mud, a bathing area lets you sit in the warm mud itself. It holds the heat against the skin and takes a while to rinse off.

Residents still cook and bathe with the geothermal water, and the guides live there. Corn is boiled in a pool between the houses and sold on the spot.

One drop of 7m makes this the highest commercially rafted fall in the country. Boats do flip, which is why the safety briefing runs long.

Two lakes side by side hold entirely different colours. One is open for swimming and the other is sacred to Maori and closed to entry.

A Tudor-style bathhouse built in 1908 as a spa sanatorium closes off the formal lawns. On the greens out front, elderly players in white roll bowls and hit croquet balls. Past the fences at the edges the ground steams, and sulphur hangs over the paths.

Open-air hot pools lined up along the shore of Lake Rotorua. One is called the Priest pool after a priest who bathed here in 1878 and was said to be cured of arthritis. Acidic and alkaline pools are kept apart, so read the signs before you choose one.

A free park in central Rotorua where mud pools bubble behind fences and a lake steams. In 2001 the ground burst open and flung mud and rocks over the treetops. Kick off your shoes to soak your feet in the shallow pools, and look for Saturday morning stalls.

A Maori village on geothermal ground by the lake, steam rising between houses. At St Faith's Church, built in 1914, a window etched with Christ in a Maori cloak makes him seem to walk on the lake when seen from a pew. Graves sit above the hot ground.

A geothermal valley created by the Tarawera eruption of 1886. The steaming Frying Pan Lake ranks among the largest hot springs anywhere. The track runs downhill to the lakeshore, and a shuttle bus from stops along the way spares you the climb back.

A village buried overnight in ash from the 1886 Tarawera eruption, now dug out. The whare where the guide Sophia Hinerangi sheltered survivors still stands. A bush path behind drops to the Wairoa falls on slippery steps, so wear trainers.

Across the water rises the split summit of Mount Tarawera, which blew in 1886. It is 20 minutes from town yet far clearer than Lake Rotorua. Hot Water Beach on the far shore has no road, only boat access; dig into the sand and hot water seeps up.

A farm show that calls up nineteen breeds of sheep one by one to stand on tiered stage steps. A shearing demonstration and sheepdogs working a flock follow. At the end the audience can come up and give a lamb its bottle.

The deepest natural source of its kind in the North Island, so clear you can watch water welling up through the sand on the bed. Redwoods grow beside the stream it feeds. The local iwi hold the place sacred and ask visitors not to swim or fish.

A free hot stream down a gravel road through the bush, tumbling over a small waterfall into a pool. There are no changing rooms, so arrive in swimwear. Geothermal water can carry an amoeba that infects the brain, so never put your head under.

South of town, clear boiling water wells up in a farm valley and cools on its way down a stream. That flow fills several pools kept at different temperatures. A boardwalk behind the pools follows the stream for about 10 minutes to the boiling source.

A block at the lake end of Tutanekai Street roofed over and lined with restaurants. Even in rain you can sit at the outdoor tables. It is busiest after the evening cultural shows let out, so grab a table early.

A free lakeshore path behind Government Gardens, where shoreline mud is stained yellow by sulphur. Black-billed gulls nest in this wildlife refuge, so stay on the boardwalk. When wind comes off the lake, the rotten-egg smell grows strong.