Fodor's Expert Review Waiotapu

This is a freakish landscape of deep, sulfur-crusted pits, jade-color ponds, silica terraces, and a steaming lake edged with red algae and bubbling with tiny beads of carbon dioxide. The Lady Knox Geyser erupts precisely at 10:15 daily; other points of interest include the Devil's Ink Pots, a series of evil-looking, bubbling, plopping mud pools, and the spectacular, gold-edged Champagne Pool, which is 195 feet wide and equally deep. Birds nest in holes around the aptly named Birds' Nest Crater—the heat presumably allows the adult birds more time away from the eggs. Waiotapu is 30 km (19 miles) southeast of Rotorua; follow Highway 5 south (Taupo direction) and look for the signs.