New Zealand

It's called Pohutu which means big splash. I guess that pretty much sums it up - no need to elaborate.

A Maori guide opens a large wooden box in the ground where meat is slowly cooking from the steam rising from the ground. Tubs are filled with the boiling hot…

they discovered this geyser when maori women were doing laundry and detergent spilled down its hole - bubbly water slowly emerged before the geyser blew a full blast of hot…

these pools of mud contain unrefined crude oil and in the 18,00s and early 19,00s the sludge from the top was skimmed off to burn in kerosene lanterns

this is the first stop with a local guide on the thermal wonderland tour. It's the largest mud bath in the world and quite steamy! This tour included 3 other…

This is champagne pool, the largest hot spring in NZ formed about 700 years ago by a hydrothermal eruption- the bubbles, caused by carbon dioxide is what inspired its name.

minerals like gold, silver, mercury, sulphur, arsenic, and thallium suspend in the water and refract the light of the sun to create a rainbow of colors.

Maori parents return their children's umbilical cords ( te pito ) to these springs because it represents a place of cultural significance as ancestral land. Because they believe humans come…

Peter Jackson discovered the pastures of the shire when he flew over the Alexander family sheep farm in Matamata. While the original plan called for burning the village down after…

The attention to detail is so great here that at any moment you expect Bilbo to open the door and say "We are plain quiet folk and have no use…