Thermal wonderlands

The crust of the earth is nothing like the skin of an apple. Instead it is more like a jigsaw puzzle and all the pieces are called tectonic plates.
New Zealand is a very young country. About 130 million years ago New Zealand broke away from Gondwanaland (which included Africa, Australia, Antarctica and South America) but has only been it's present shape for 10,000 years!! New Zealand sits where the Pacific and IndoAustralian plates meet which causes Earthquakes, Volcanic eruptions and thermal areas - but never mind those the only thing I worry about is tsunamis!
We went on three walks to different thermal areas. The first one we visited was called the 'Craters of the Moon' walk because it did look rather like the moon with all the steam coming from underground and the craters that looked like they belonged to a different planet. The second thermal area was called Orakei Korako. The most interesting thing we saw on this walk was a very big cave with a nice pool of warm water at the bottom of it. It is very special to Maoris because Maori women used to use the pool as a mirror seeing as it was so still. Apparently, you can make a wish if you dip your left hand in to the water at the same time as wishing and your wish is guaranteed to come true if you don't tell anybody. I made my wish but I've wished it for the future so I'm not quite sure it will come true yet. Another interesting thing we saw on the Orakei Korako walk was seeing the 'diamond geyser'. It is called this because if it erupts water spurts out into many different droplets that look like diamonds shooting in to the air. The last thermal area was called Wai-O-Tapu which means 'Sacred Waters' in Maori. My two favourite features were the devil's bath which looked like the devil's bath - it was bright green, not a very nice green, it looked like the devil had been bathing in it. My other favourite one was the 'Champagne Pool', it is called this because it has bubble of carbon dioxide in it, like champagne. The champagne pool was 80 metres deep and was a bright blue colour! My mummy would have really liked it if it was real champagne!!
The thermal areas were amazing - there aren't many things like that in England!

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