Natural silica deposits, built up over hundreds of years, formed steps and hollows that brimmed with a continuous flow of hot mineral water. Alas the only record of these wonders are a few sketches and the odd painting - the whole delicate century-old edifice lies broken and buried at the bottom of Lake Rotomatana in 20 metres of rubble and ash thanks to the cataclysmic eruption of Mt Tarawera in 1886. Despite this, people's fascination with the area still brought them flocking, and today it is a booming tourist town rivalling Queenstown in the south.

Wandering around town, you are hard pushed to find any visual evidence of the latent powers that bubble beneath your feet. This is mainly because almost every house and hotel has a borehole sunk into its backyard that sucks the geothermal energy out of the ground as a source of cheap heat. The one area spared this ignominy is Kuirau park. It's a fairly standard affair - trees, flowerbeds, neatly mown lawns - apart from the steaming pits of black churning water. The flora is all caged in by neat fences, apart from a few tiny blossoms that have recently poked their way up out of the grass as a result of the constantly shifting subterranean hydrodynamics. At night it is an eerie place; the uninhabitable lakes and ponds bubble and steam wisps from the black surface, creating strange dancing forms in the moonlight.

All this, however, is small cheese when compared to Rotorua's jewel in the crown - the Wai-o-Tapu thermal park. We all bundled out of the bus to be welcomed to the park by Lady Knox. She is, of course, a geyser. First discovered by a group of bush-clearing prisoners who, not quite believing their good fortune at finding a hot water supply this far into the undeveloped outback, proceeded to wash their clothes. After they had worked up a good soapy lather in the pristine waters they were somewhat surprised when their washing was shot sixty feet into the air by a jet of superheated steam.

The same surface-tension breaking trick is used today to induce the geyser to perform daily at 10:15am for tour groups. Three pounds of soap flakes were poured into the mouth of the geyser and everyone waited in anticipation. For a few minutes the spout frothed like a freshly opened champagne bottle. Then, slowly, a column of raw white superheated steam rose up into the air and the ground beneath our feet beginning to rumble and tremble as boiling water shuddered through the bedrock. After a few minutes everyone shuffled back to their coaches and left the geyser to recuperate for tomorrow’s performance.

Inside the park, paths weave between gaping craters and fissures that steam away emitting even more pungent smells. Some are dry but scorched by sulphur-laden steam; some are full of black viscous bubbling goo. Further down, the craters become pools of simmering water - green, yellow, white - coloured by their exotic mineral content. Looking back, pillars of steam rise above the sparsely vegetated landscape. The restless earth beneath fumes and bubbles. Here and there, small sulphur-rimmed cracks cough and splutter angrily. The star of the show is the Champagne pool - named after the hiss of escaping carbon dioxide bubbles that continuously well up from the depths. Sixty metres wide and sixty metres deep it is a huge simmering cauldron of emerald green liquid, bounded by a ring of bright orange mineral deposits: antimony, sulphur and gold. It is swathed in thick clouds of racing steam that twist and dance in the wind. Even six feet from the water's precipitous edge you can feel the intense heat of the water shimmering at a constant 74 degrees Celsius.

Later that evening, I made my way down to the bay just in time for one of Rotorua's ubiquitous Maori concerts. Normally this would be held in the richly carved meeting house, apologised our host but, as a hot spring had recently broken through the foundations, the show would now take place in the not-so-richly carved dining room.

I felt a great deal of empathy for the guy in the audience who volunteered to accept the traditional Maori challenge from a substantially more fearsome warrior than I had faced back in Paihia. He did the right thing and after an opening speech by our host the fun began. The show proceeded without any kind of electronic amplification- there was no need. The clapping, slapping and bellowing chants developed into an almost deafening infective rhythm. Songs, stories, chants and dances wound their way through the evening. The atmosphere was more like that of a rather polished village amateur dramatics production - everyone had fun and no one took it too seriously.

The evening rounded off, first with a demonstration of poi - balls on the end of strings that are swung around in confusing but beautiful patterns, highly reminiscent, for jugglers, of club swinging. Pretty good, I thought, until they proceeded to swing two poi in each hand at which point my mind began boggling. Finally, half the audience was drawn up onto the stage (myself included) to attempt to perform, for the remainder of the audience, the Haka. Needless to say we made complete fools of ourselves. "That was very funny", grinned a Brazilian guy as I stumbled back to my seat.

By the time I reached Taupo, an hour down the road, the sulphur smell had either vanished or I had become immune. There is still thermal activity here but, since the 1950s, a huge geothermal power station has been tapping its energies. Taupo, the traditional Kiwi holiday destination, sits on the edge of Lake Taupo - the eye in the centre of the North Island. It is the result of a gigantic volcanic eruption that occurred in 183AD with more than ten times the destructive power of Krakatoa.

It's a big lake - more like a small sea with cliffs ringing part of it and tall snow-capped volcanic cones lining its southern shore. I spent the afternoon wandering, firstly staring in amazement at a pontoon anchored 100 feet offshore labelled 'The great Lake Taupo hole-in-one challenge'. I watched the punters create small splashes in the waters near the pontoon as their golf balls sank without a trace and wondered at the Kiwi ingenuity at devising legitimate schemes to part gullible tourists (like myself) from their dollars. I didn't partake in this particular scheme, instead I amused myself by throwing handfuls of the ultralight pumice stone that litters the beach into the lake and watching as it floated away.

Pausing to photograph Taupo's only red double decker bus - one that travelled, mostly, overland from London between 1970 and 1973 - I wandered down along the course of the slow Waikato river that drains Lake Taupo. Spectacular white cliffs drop down to the waters far below and I watched the inevitable jumpers bungy off the edge for a while, feeling for them as they shuffled, legs bound together, out over the precipice. After a while I decided upon a more relaxing end to the day. I wandered up the hill to the hot baths and sat, partially submerged, watching the midwinter sun set through a haze of steam.