Craters of the Moon

Why it matters

The thermal field itself is old. Steam has been coming out of the ground at Karapiti for centuries — the operators' own history puts surface activity here at more than seven hundred years, and records that the great steam column at the blowhole was used by Māori navigators as a landmark for crossing Lake Taupō. That is the part of this place that has always been true.

The craters are not that. In 1958 the Wairakei geothermal power station was commissioned two kilometres north, only the second large-scale plant of its kind anywhere in the world, and it began drawing hot fluid out of the reservoir under this ground at industrial volume. The pressure below fell, and the boiling front rose. Superheated water that had been held down by the weight of what sat on top of it came up instead, through any weakness it could find, blowing out craters as it went. New Zealand's national tourism body puts it about as plainly as it can be put: a large area of land north of Taupō suddenly began to get hot and emit steam.

There is a bleak symmetry to it. A few kilometres away at Wairakei there had been a geyser valley — a real one, with real geysers — and the same drop in pressure that made this field erupt killed those outright. The country traded a geyser valley for a power station, and was handed a crater field it had not asked for. The published measurements of the heat coming out of this ground tell the story in one line: a modest field in 1950, and roughly ten times as much heat escaping by the mid-1960s.

Which makes three. Ten kilometres away, Huka Falls runs at a volume the power company sets. Downstream at Aratiatia a dam is opened to a timetable and a gorge is filled for a quarter of an hour. And here the spectacle is not merely managed but manufactured — the only one of the three that would not exist at all if the turbines had been built somewhere else. Taupō's great sights are, to an unusual degree, an industrial by-product. It is worth knowing that before you arrive, because it changes what you are looking at.

What it's like

The smell reaches the car park first — hydrogen sulphide, the standard central North Island note, less aggressive here than at Rotorua and gone from your attention within about four minutes. Then the boardwalk turns and the ground opens up, and the first thing that registers is not the steam but the colour of the earth: bleached greys and chalky whites where the acid has eaten the soil back to mineral, run through with rust-orange and sulphur-yellow, everything looking scorched and powdery and faintly wrong.

Steam comes out of it everywhere, from vents a centimetre across to fissures you could put an arm into, and because the vents are scattered rather than concentrated the effect is of a hillside gently exhaling. On a still morning the columns go straight up, twenty or thirty of them at once, and the place looks exactly like the photographs. In a breeze the steam lies down and drags across the boardwalk and you walk through it, which is warm and wet and smells of eggs, and is the moment most people start enjoying themselves.

The craters, when you reach them, are bigger than the name prepares you for and completely silent. There is no bubbling in most of them, no drama, nothing happening at all — just a steep bowl of pale ground with steam sliding up the sides. The mud pool near the far end of the loop is the exception and it draws a crowd of four or five people at a time, plopping and turning over with the sound of thick soup.

How to visit

Getting there is five minutes by car and there is no realistic alternative. From the Taupō i-SITE, take Wairakei Drive north for 5.5 km, then turn into Karapiti Road and follow it 1.7 km to the car park. There is no bus, and although you can ride out, the last stretch is on a road with no shoulder and nothing to look at.

Admission is NZ$10.20 for an adult, NZ$5.10 for a child aged five to fifteen or a senior, NZ$25.50 for a family of two adults and up to four children, and free for under-fives. Taupō residents pay half price with proof of address. The site is run by the Craters of the Moon Trust, which states that it operates under permit from the landowners, Ngāti Tūwharetoa.

The main loop is forty minutes on an easy grade — fine gravel and wooden boardwalk, suitable for most ages and most fitness. The upper walkway adds about twenty minutes to reach the lookout, and it is a moderate climb with a good many steps. Neither is wheelchair accessible, and prams are not recommended; if that matters, know it before you pay at the kiosk rather than after.

There is a kiosk at the car park, no dogs are allowed, and the whole site is smokefree and vapefree. The birds are fed daily at 10am, and food for them is sold at the kiosk — which is either a charming small ritual or a reason to arrive at 10.15, depending on how you feel about queues.

Making the most of it

Go on the coldest, stillest morning you get. This is the single decision that changes the visit, and it is worth reorganising a day around. Steam is visible because warm vapour meets cold air; the ground is doing exactly the same thing at two in the afternoon in February, and you simply cannot see it. A frosty winter morning at opening time gives you the hillside at full strength. A warm still afternoon gives you a scrubby paddock with a smell.

Take the upper walkway. Most visitors do the main loop and leave, which is a shame, because from the loop you are always inside the field looking at individual vents. The twenty minutes of steps buy you the only view that shows what the place actually is — the whole steaming shelf at once, with the Wairakei plant beyond it and the reason sitting in the same frame as the result.

Do it first, not last. Forty minutes here before Huka Falls and Aratiatia sets up the whole day, because you arrive at the other two already knowing that the river's volume and the gorge's timetable are decisions rather than facts. In the other order it is just a walk round some steam.

Do not treat it as Rotorua's understudy. An hour north, Whakarewarewa and Waiotapu offer geysers, silica terraces and colour that this place cannot match, and a visitor comparing on spectacle alone will find Craters of the Moon thin. What it has instead is scale without staging, no timetable, no performance and no queue — and a landscape whose whole meaning is that it is new. Go for the geology and the strangeness, not for the pictures.

Nearby

Everything worth doing north of Taupō sits within ten minutes of here, on the same stretch of road. Huka Falls is five minutes away and free, and the two of them together make a comfortable half-day.Aratiatia Rapids is ten minutes further on, and unlike the other two it has to be timed — the dam gates open to a published schedule, so the day gets built around that and everything else fits either side.

The Wairakei power station itself sits between them, and having read why this ground behaves as it does you may find the pipework more interesting on the way back than it was on the way out. Taupō is five minutes south. An hour and a quarter beyond that, the Tongariro Alpine Crossing needs a whole day and its own planning.