Tikitere - Hell's Gate, Rotorua

Hell's Gate, I think, is the most damnable I have ever visited, and I'd willingly have paid ten pounds not to have seen it. George Bernard Shaw is reputed to have said this when he visited in 1934.

Tikitere, a contraction of "Taku tiki i tere nei" -My youngest daughter has floated away - recalls the tragedy of a young woman jumping into a thermal pool. In this case "tiki" is a contraction of "potiki" (= last-born), and is not a reference to a figure, carved from wood or greenstone.

Tikitere really is an awesome place with all the features you would expect in a thermal area - hot pools, lots of steam, boiling mud, but there is a big difference between this area and the others in the Rotorua district. All the water that you see is ordinary groundwater that has been heated by huge quantities of steam flowing through it, and is not hot water that has come from any great depth.

The result is that the chemistry of Tikitere's waters is very different from those of other geothermal areas in the district. Scientists describe the waters as "acid-sulphate" (shallow waters) and "chloride-bicarbonate" (deeper waters), in contrast with the "alkali-chloride" waters common in most other North Island geothermal areas.

Don't miss the Kakahi Falls - well, you can't, really - these are the biggest hot water falls in the southern hemisphere. Fill up a bottle with water from the Sulphur Bath; it is supposed to be effective for treating septic cuts, bites and some skin complaints.

About 5000 tonnes of sulphur has been removed in surface diggings and some of the steam vents are lined with fantastic bright yellow deposits of this elemental mineral. In 1881 the sulphur beds caught fire and burnt down a whare and the bathhouses, nearly suffocating several invalids all of whom escaped, but who did lose all their clothes and other possessons.

There is also an attractive bush track where you might spot some native orchids.

New Zealand on the Web is very grateful to Tom Lum who supplied us with this excellent information on Hell's Gate.