Blowing Off Steam | Kuirau Park, New Zealand

What do you do when you're feeling restless and mad? Do you let it out in rage? It feels good to release pent up energy, right? But most of the time we end up doing or saying things we regret when we let our strong feelings get the best of us.

Regrets are there to teach us to never again do the things we just did.

I will now continue my accounts of my stay in New Zealand when I had an episode of restlessness and anger towards myself. I sought to find solace and to blow off steam in the parks of Rotorua, New Zealand, one that was alive with geothermal activity.

In my previous post, I talked about stepping out of the conference venue to head to the Sulfur Point Park. I traversed the quite dangerous path on my own and made my way out of the Government Gardens where I stepped into the streets of the Central Business District ready to go wherever my dress shoes would take me.

I passed by the Rotorua iSite which is a tourism center. The building had the same European Tudor Style architecture as the museum in the Government Gardens. But you could still see Maori influences on the building facade. I only took a peak inside the building before deciding where I would go.

I used Google Maps to find the location of a nearby park. I could reach it on foot, and so I passed by different establishments, crossed un-congested roads, and very few people. Rotorua seemed like a sleepy town.

After a few minutes of walking under the sharp heat of the UV-rich southern hemisphere sun, I arrived at Kuirau Park. It's another huge free to visit park of the city. By this time, my mind was completely off the things that were stressing me out. I wanted to explore every part of this park. There was a paved walkway lined with trees that provided the much needed shade. And the field was so manicured I felt like I was in an exclusive golf course. I continued walking and saw that the park had a small lagoon. And there were also sculptures. Unlike the ones in the Government Gardens, these ones looked permanent and at home amongst the landscape.

Kuirau Park is lovely and peaceful, but it is also boiling and dangerous. At the center of the park is a geothermal area with a bubbling pool of mud and smoking rocks. Signs that said "Danger Thermal Area" were scattered around. How can you make a public park out of some very risky areas? I think it depends on how people read and follow instructions. I could imagine if this place was located where I lived, it'd be closed off to the public right away.

But despite the danger posed by the area, trees still grow, and people still come. It goes to show that hazards don't drive people away, we can't completely get away from them. We must learn how to live with them and stay at a safe distance. I realize that that's how we should view our restlessness and anger. They are, in a way, hazards of life that we can't escape from. They're our own geothermal areas, steaming and hot. We can't escape them, but we must keep them at bay.

Anyway, walking around the geothermal areas behind the safety of the signs and fences made me at ease, and so I went further.

The trail led me to an astonishing sight. There was a lake at the edge of the park, and it was steaming and the white vapor was covering the area. I felt like I was in a movie. This would have been frightening if there weren't other tourists in the park with me. There was a sign that told the story of the lake. According to a legend, a woman named Kuirau used to swim at the lake. It wasn't boiling back then. But then a monster came out of the water and caused Kuirau to die of fright or to disappear by kidnapping her. Either way, no one was able to find Kuirau. Angered by this, the gods caused the lake to boil to force the monster to come out. And that's why the Kuirau Lake got its name and its boiling state.

How angry must the gods be to make a lake boil. If Kuirau was abducted by the monster and kept magically alive in his lair, they both would have died from the boiling of the lake. That's the thing about anger, right? You don't just direct it at one person, you direct it at anyone that gets in your way even though they don't deserve it. And that includes yourself.

I circled around the lake and eventually found myself at the roadside. I was out of the park, but the steam was still in the air. I was almost half a day away from the conference already. I needed to go back.

I talked about anger and regrets at the start of this post. I was angry before I did this walk around Rotorua, but I did not regret going to the nearby parks. The irony of visiting geothermal areas to cool my head down. I'm almost at the end my travel series during my visit to New Zealand, I hope to continue brand new one soon!