Natural Wonders of the Pacific

I was raised to appreciate and love the outdoors. My parents took my brother and I hiking as children and taught us to appreciate the natural beauty that we would observe. Part of the reason I was so intent on coming on the Pacific Program was to visit New Zealand's natural beauty. I had seen plenty of pictures of New Zealand in my research, but I knew that none would be able to do nature justice and that I had to see it for myself. Even with all of my research and high expectations, I was blown away by the natural wonders that I found in New Zealand.

Early on in the trip, the first weekend actually, I found myself in awe of the beauty of this country for the first time. I took a road trip to the Putangirua Pinnacles which is featured in The Lord of the Rings movie as a filming location. On a cloudless day, we made our way through the forest. The forest didn’t strike me as very different from what I had experienced in the mountain of the US. It was luscious and beautiful, but nothing overwhelmingly impressive. My expectations were fairly low when we reached a small staircase that led up to a platform. We all looked at each other wondering,

“Is this really it? Is this what we hiked for?”

Once we climbed the stairs, however, we were all left impressed by the view we saw. The Pinnacles are large pointed rock formations that are both beautiful and eerie at the same time. Beautiful contrasted against the clear blue sky and brilliantly green foliage, but also eerie in their uniqueness. I had never realized that rock could form in such a fashion naturally and found myself amazed by the process that had led to what I saw before me. We later hiked down amongst the Pinnacles which gave this disconcerting sense of loneliness. When I stood in the cracks that wove in between the Pinnacles, I felt as though I could get lost there and have no one ever know what had happened to me. Of course I was with my friends and such a thing would have never occurred, but that feeling was an eerie mysterious one that increased the intrigue of this place. After seeing the Pinnacles that first weekend, I was left with no doubt that New Zealand truly was full of the natural wonders that I so desperately

wanted to see.

A couple of weeks later I was privileged enough to see a very different type of natural wonder, this time of the geothermal sort. I traveled with a group of students to Rotorua where we went to the Wai-O-Tapu Geothermal Wonderland. As we wandered through the Wonderland, we came across the Champagne Pool. The Pool is an unusually turquoise shade of blue and the rocks that can be seen through the water are rust red. Steam curls up from the surface of the Pool indicating the extreme heat of the water beneath. Everything about the colors and heat of the Pool go against the knowledge that I had about how water should look. This was when I realized that part of what makes natural wonders so jaw-dropping to me is their departure from what I know. The chemicals that changed the color of the Pool and the phenomena that result in the deadly heat of the water are aspects that combined in a way that I had never witnessed anywhere making it all the more beautiful to me.

Attractions all across the Wai-O-Tapu Wonderland park drew me in with their magnificence in a similar fashion to the Champagne Pool. It made me wonder what all of these places were like when they were completely wild and not a tourist attraction like they are today. Ignoring the sidewalks, railings, and people nearby was as close as I could come to imagining these geothermal wonders as they might have been 50 years ago. I feel fortunate to have been able to appreciate other landscapes of New

Zealand in a much more natural environment through hiking.

The Tongariro Alpine Crossing hike gave me the perfect opportunity to appreciate nature in a somewhat less touristy fashion. The Crossing is still a high traffic hike, but there aren’t sidewalks and railings like I saw at the Wai-O-Tapu Wonderland. Hiking in New Zealand is never an easy endeavor and a 20 km hike was certainly no exception to that rule. Our final ascent was the hardest section of the hike straight up unstable, sometimes icy, volcanic rock. At the summit itself, we were engulfed in clouds and began our descent down unsure of what view we were missing.

Halfway through our slip and slide down the volcanic rock, the clouds cleared to reveal the Emerald Lakes. The Emerald Lakes are almost exactly what they sound like, large expanses of brilliantly green water. When the clouds cleared, I stopped so abruptly that I almost fell forwards down the steep descent. I was just too amazed by the view that stretched before me. The Lakes exist so untouched by my or any other human influence. The beauty that I saw was most likely very similar to the beauty that would’ve been seen 50 years ago. In that moment I felt a sense of motivation. Motivation to preserve the view that I was seeing so that future generations, my children or grandchildren, could also see such a view one day.

My time in New Zealand brought me in contact with more instances of beautiful nature than I ever could have imagined. I find myself leaving the Pacific region with a better appreciation of nature in all of its different forms and how much nature matters. Everything I’ve seen are views that I want my children to be able to enjoy as much as I have. I feel much more strongly about climate change now and the destruction that humanity is bringing upon the Earth. If we continue in the fashion that we are, the Pinnacles, Champagne Pool, and Emerald Lakes might not be so pristine or exist at all 50 years from now. All of these realizations are just more lessons that I have learned outside the classroom as a result of this study abroad experience.

~S