The first pool was black, speckled with pale green mud, and steaming. It took a second for the skin on my foot to register the scalding heat, and I pulled it straight back out again. I'd save The Doctor for later.
Soloman was much more inviting - a soft grey in colour and like a hot bath in temperature, I sank up to my neck and felt the tensions of the week slide away.
Sometime later, we found the milky green cold pools where we could scoop mud from the bottom and smear it over our bodies until we looked like washed-out versions of the Incredible Hulk.
Waiariki Pools, or Ngawha springs as they are still known to most, haven't changed since I visited as a child in the 70s. If anything, they're even more ramshackle - a dozen rectangular holes in the ground bound by a patchwork fence, linked by broken pathways and surrounded by attempts at gardens long forgotten. It costs next to nothing to visit them, your coins taken by a laidback guy in a shed where there's nothing else for sale - no drinks or food, no souvenirs. People come here for the mineral-laden hot water and nothing else. It's the kind of place where you can have an easy conversation with the people in the same pool as you, tell newcomers where to find the mud for their skin, and see who's been stoic enough to brave the hottest pool of all. Someone told us that the man in the shed told them that you should get in the 44C Bulldog last, as it would wash the sulphur smell from your skin, otherwise you and your clothes would smell of it for days. The Bulldog was the hottest, blackest, smelliest pool, and as I sluiced the searing water over my shoulders I realised they must tell everyone that just to have a laugh as you try to endure it. We left smelling of sulphur.
