Will Loves Water
One of the things I love most is relaxing outside in hot water….
One of my favorite baths is in Tokaanu near Taupo. I arrived at a rest area, one afternoon years ago, and an old house trucker asked if i wanted a bath. At first i was little put out, but realised he was harmless enough and agreed. Two big concrete baths are dug into the ground to ground level next to each other. Boiling hot water, with no smell of sulfur, flows out of the ground and can be directed into or away from the baths with cloth.
The house trucker, who i think was called Warren, gave me a scrubbing brush and bucket to clean out the baths, then we filled them with river water and the hot water. Warren then said I would have to go get beer, as drinking bubbles in hot water makes you feel light and drinking water makes you heavy. So i ran to the pub, bought beer, and ran back. We sat for hours talking and topping up the baths. Warren had been an activist his whole life, had made the first signs to be careful of the penguins in Wellington on the coast and had lost his son in a hit and run accident.
Another great place is called Welcome Flats. You get to it via the Copland Track in between the glaciers on the West Coast of the South Island. The track is 6 hrs walk up an old river bed to 5 hot pools of varying heat and a two story doc hut. You are surrounded by Mt Cook and mountains and a on a clear night with no light pollution an amazing sky. Just be careful in Spring with the snow melts.
One last place I really rate is Ngawha springs in Kaikohe, featured in the film Kaikohe Demolition which if you haven’t seen rules! There are many different pools with different mineral contents, temperatures, muds etc, one pool is supposed to cleanse your eyes if you open them in it and another is called the doctor which is so hot you need to keep totally still to handle it. The smell of sulfur is strong though so don’t take new clothes!!!
Will
