Lovely Orakei Korako

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 24009, 5 July 1941, Page 17

Lovely Orakei Korako

•HEAR "ANNE SHIRLEY,—A few V months ago we visited Orakei Korako. perhaps the most interesting place in New Zealand. The road led past a lonely mountain, with a forest on its bald head, and churning Rainbow Rapids. Then steeply round dangerous corners and cliffs. At Orakei Kornko a luide took .us across a foaming, bubbling stream in what he called a ferry, but was really a big box on wire ropes, worked by winding a handle. No one would guess that this wild torrent is the same peaceful river that flows through Hamilton. With limestone terraces, a stone elephant. complete even to its backbone, sparkling geysers, boiling mud springs and hot streams, where coloured mosses tell the temperature, the place was like a dream. But best of all was Aladdin's Cave. The mouth is screened by pungas. From there a staircase leads into an underground cave. A fairy-like, turquoise coloured wishing-pool stretches half-way across the floor to the base of a most amazing, semi-circular wall. It's of stone, and in colours prettier than any rainbow Bright mauves. pinks, browns, green and orange mingle from one side to the other, and are repeated in a smaller cave hidden on one side of the pool The strangest thing about this large cave is the way it carries sound. It's so deep that the people on the floor look like dolls to the people on the rim, but when the guide sang to ns, those on top heard him more clearly than those on the bottom.—Yours truly. Moira Lfrtyd, Ngnromn