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| Before becoming the Buried Village, this area was the world-famous Pink and White Terraces. Hot water (geothermal) flowed down from the top, with wading / bathing pool terraces all the way up and down. | Tourists would start at the cooler bottom, bathing in the warm water, and work their way up to the hotter top pools, then slowly come back down to the cooler bottom terraces. | Now it's the "Buried Village" and museum. And a gorgeous waterfall. | The White and Pink Terraces were popular tourist attractions up through 1886. | |||
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| Until, a nearby volcano errupted - Mt Tarawera in 1886 | Everything within kilometres was buried. | 153 people were killed. In the 1930's a local family started excavating and opened it to the public. | Starting walking through the excavations, a cute mushroom! | They've been excavating for a while, but there's still more to go | ||
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| Notice the white markers to the right and left of Bob - future sites to dig up | What's left of the main hotel in the town | A crate and a ladder can be seen | A house of a resident. The walls and roof have been re-created | |||
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| The steps down into the house show how much mud buried this area in the erruption. | Recent rains have this local stream up over its banks, over the path even | pretty flowers along the stream | ||||
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| Further in the Buried Village is a gorgeous waterfall of 30 metres tall | Just beautiful | from the base of the falls looking up | another little waterfall further down | Climbing back up to the Buried Village | ||
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| All these trails have steep steps, but are well-maintained paths. Lots of ferns. | The whole path of the stream, and the valley topography was changed by the erruption | From a little further left, Lake Tarawera is in the distance. Mt Tarawera, which was the errupting volcano that buried this area, is on the other side of that lake. That's a long ways away! | |||