February 28, 2026
Today was a big drive day since it was over 5 hours to the Whakapapa Village in Tongariro National Park, where we would be staying for the next two nights. We got up early and were on the road by 7:30 AM. Our first stop was to see Mokena Geyser in the town of Te Aroha. It is a CO2 cold water geyser that we had previously seen erupt in 2019. When we first arrived, Heinrich thought it was dead since there was no sign of water around the vent enclosure, no steam, and it was very quiet. But then I read some recent reports online that it had been erupting about every 40 minutes, so we decided to wait. That turned out to be the correct decision since we were rewarded with an eruption about 25 minutes later. We then stayed around to see a second eruption for a closed interval of about 45 minutes.
For this geyser and other geothermal activity that we see on this trip, I am not going to write much since Heinrich has already provided a lot of details on his web page. So I will provide a link to Heinrich's observations:
Our next stop was the Tokaanu Thermal Reserve near Turangi. We had visited here before in both 2019 and 2023 and had been successful in watching Taumatapuhipuhi Geyser erupt. But today it was not to be: we saw some boiling in the geyser crater, but the amount of debris at the edge of the crater indicated that a recent eruption had not occurred.
This was another place where we crossed paths with Graham, who was on his way to Taupo for the night and had stopped at Tokaanu for a few hours. Graham told us he had already been there for about a half hour but did not see any change in Taumatapuhipuhi.
Hoani, which we had seen erupt in 2023, was not overflowing and the water level was down by a meter. The area behind the crater that had been covered with water in 2019 was now dry.
On the other side of the trail, Matawai Spring was hot and boiling with its runoff pouring into Hoani.
We bid farewell to Graham and continued on our way to Tongariro. We stopped briefly at a roadside pullout with a nice view of Lake Taupo.
As we approached Whakapapa, the blue sky disappeared. At the village it was completely overcast and drizzling rain. We checked into our room at the Skotel Alpine Resort, which is the highest elevation hotel in New Zealand. We had reserved one of the nicest rooms at the resort. It was a corner room with mountain views on two sides and a balcony where we could sit outside and enjoy the views. Too bad the weather was so bad that the views were suboptimal.
It turned out that evening had the best views for the entire time we were there. At one point the sun came out briefly and produced a small rainbow near where the famous Lord of the Rings "Mount Doom" (Mount Ngauruhoe) was located.
For our evening entertainment we walked down the hall to the bar and ordered a pizza, beer and wine. I forgot to take a picture, so below is at the end of our meal.
Back at the room we saw sunset colors from the balcony, and finally, one view of Mount Ngauruhoe.
