The Buried Village and Geothermal Power Plant

Visit to the Buried Village

RISE ‘N SHINE: There is nothing worse than having to get up early after a long night of partying. The bus is leaving today at 8:30AM sharp. Most of us didn’t get back until 2AMish last night.

Apparently I narrowly dodged a hangover, and the shower wakes me up enough to be coherent and realize we have about 14 minutes until we need to be on the bus. I quickly rouse the other two roommates, and we get going.

LEFT BEHIND: Once I get aboard the bus, I notice not everyone is there yet. Groggy students eventually file on board. With all but two people on board, the impatient bus driver pulls away. We look back to see poor Kevin hauling ass to try to catch the bus, but then he gives up. The bus driver, despite our gentle reminders “YOU’RE LEAVING KEVIN YOU MORON!”, finally pulls over after a few hundred meters, and somebody runs back to grab Kevin.

Now we’re minus one, but Vladik doesn’t make it. For the remainder of the trip, when they ask if we have everyone, someone will chip in, “Vladik’s not here!”

Our first stop is an overlook of the city of Taupo. Professor John gives a quick lecture, which boils down to “we’re sitting on a giant volcano”. If I was younger, I’d definitely be a little spooked, especially when he mentions they’re still “active.” Fortunately, “Active” means erupts every 20,000 years or so. He points out the different volcanoes we can see from the spot, all with complex Maori names that I can neither pronounce nor remember how to spell.

We hop back on the bus, confirm that we have everyone but Vladik, and continue to our next destination: the Buried Village.

The Buried Village is a village that got caught in the wrong place at the wrong time when a volcano erupted all over it. The interesting part is that hot lava didn’t destroy the place, but tons of ash did, effectively preserving the village. Despite the tragedy, it did manage to act as a huge time capsule and gives us a good insight to the past.

A well-stocked museum sits by the village, and we go in there first. We are greeted by Huru, a slightly overweight Maori who will be guiding us through the Musuem. This guy is definitely one of the most interesting people we’ve met on the trip so far. I’ve never seen anyone more passionate and enthusiastic about what they do than Huru. It turns out he’s a direct descendant of people who lived in the village, which helps explain why he loves what he does.

He tends to use “Ladies and Gentlemen” as an interjection and not just a greeting, and glues together sentences with the phrase. He also talks with his hands, waving them furiously as he gets excited about something, and frequently slapping the displays to make a point. Huru turned what would otherwise be a pretty boring walk through a museum into a fairly interesting topic.

Afterwards, we perform our well-rehearsed sunscreen ritual and head out to see the village itself. I was rather disappointed, most of the good stuff that was excavated was brought into the museum, so the main remnants consist mostly of old structures. The architecture of the time wasn’t particularly advanced—everything followed the “hut” theme or variations of it, but it was still cool to imagine that 100 years ago people were here, clueless they were about to be obliterated by a volcano.

The trail leads down to a very pretty waterfall, which makes for a good photo opportunity. Jeff wastes no time in slipping and falling knee-deep into some mud. I laugh. I later learned that Geoffrey does the same thing, in the same place just minutes later. I laugh at both of them.

SHEEP FUN: Lunch consisted of some mediocre Quiche with salad. I was really hungry, so it probably tasted better than it actually was. It probably wasn’t worth the NZ$10 they charged for it. I wander around and snap some more random pics. I noticed a sheep earlier on, and run back to take pictures of it, remembering that I had no good pictures of the most populous animal on the island. When we walk over to it, I “baaaaa”ed at it as a test. To our surprise, it looks up from its all-important meal of grass, gives a quizzical look, and “baaaaa”s straight back at us. Talk about fun! I try it again, but the sheep outwits us and figures out we’re just messing with it.

We load up, take a head count, confirm Vladik is indeed still missing, and continue to our next destination, the geothermal power plant.

I think my expectations were a little high for this. As we approach the site, all we see are tons of pipes, some terminating in the ground. This looks kind of neat from the bus, but I was hoping to get inside one of the turbine buildings or something. Turns out, all we do is look at the stuff from a hill.

THERMOLAND: The engineer talking to us is exactly what you would expect an old-weathered engineer to talk like. He speaks a little too loudly, and throws in engineering statistics much like an anchor on Sportscenter would. He assumes most of us have had a large background in geothermal energy conversion, and we are quickly lost as he rambles on. Having taken thermodynamics, I pick up bits here and there and find it quite interesting, but most of the younger people on the trip just roll up their sleeves and catch some sun while he talks.

NZ's geothermal plant is unique in that it's the first plant in the world to run directly off of steam coming out of the ground. Most other plants are "Dry steam" types which drop water down a hole with hot rocks at the bottom and the water is turned to steam there. This plant, a "wet steam" type, uses steam from water that is already underground. Amazing, this is enough to provide 330 megawatts of power. While only a fraction of NZ's power supply, it is a clean resource that hopefully doesn't need replentishing. Too bad not every country has a few tappable hot spots in their neighborhood.

At this point, we’re a quite a ways from Taupo and the drive back takes over an hour.

MUSSELS: We roll downtown to find something to eat, and a small group of us settle on a random café. According to the waiter, their New Zealand mussels are something to write home about, so I order the Surf ‘n Turf (steak ‘n mussels) to try them out. I’ve never had a mussel before, and they are rather intimidating to eat. They look like something out of fear factor. I grab one, fearlessly scoop it out and chow down, and man are they good! I love it when I get exposure to a new type of food.

We call it an early night, seeing as we have to be up at 7am the next morning. Some of the more intrepid party-goers make an expedition anyway, and I question their ability to get up in the morning. However, I have some faith; any seasoned party-goer can wake up anytime, anyplace if it’s important enough.