NZ + 19: Volcanoes and Waterfalls

The buried village at The Buried Village is buried because a mountain exploded and chucked lava and mud and ash all over it.

As you might expect, it's not completely buried or there would be precious little point in it being a tourist attraction. And it's quite a good one!

They have restored parts of this hut and excavated so you can go inside, but most of the original timbers are there and it's up to its waist in solidified geothermal gunk...



...as is this one...



...and this one...



There was a whole hotel here at the time of the explosion and the solitary occupant was some bloke from Newcastle-upon-Tyne who had just lost all of his family in tragic circumstances and had come here to see lovely scenery and get away from it all. The veranda collapsed on him during the eruption and that was him gone too. You can probably find his name on the website. I can't remember it, despite the interactive three-minute audio-visual presentation, the like of which is compulsory at this kind of place.

Anyway, eruption and buried stuff aside, another side effect of the turbulent NZ landscape has been to create these waterfalls in the valley just downstream from the village. Photos don't do this kind of thing justice, but here are a couple anyway...



I know there are bigger ones elsewhere, but this was very secluded and extremely beautiful.



And that was it here.

Apart from the Blue Lake and the Green Lake which we stopped to have a look at. Here's the info - you'll have to enlarge it to see!



And now you've read that, all you have to do is work out which one is which.





I'm not sure it's that hard!

And after the cable car and the luge and the buried village and the waterfalls and the lakes you might think that was it for today, but there was still time to visit Hell!