Walk the Champagne Pool and the Artist’s Palette
A geothermal field of collapsed craters and mineral terraces where the ground runs orange, green, purple and gold. The Champagne Pool is sixty-five metres across and about the temperature of a very hot bath at its edge.
The pool formed in a hydrothermal eruption around nine hundred years ago and gets its name from the carbon dioxide bubbling constantly through it. The brilliant orange rim is arsenic and antimony sulphides precipitating out of the water; the centre holds at roughly 74°C and is far deeper than it looks.
Overflow from the pool spreads across the Artist’s Palette, a broad silica shelf where the colours shift with the wind and the water level. Elsewhere on the field are the Devil’s Bath, a flat sulphur-yellow-green that looks synthetic, and the Primrose Terrace, the largest sinter terrace in the country.
Three marked loops cover the site, taking between thirty and seventy-five minutes. The full circuit is the one worth doing — the far end is quieter and includes the terrace and the crater lakes.
Good to Know
Availability, exact timings and pricing depend on your itinerary, hotel and season — your Finders & Keepers Safaris specialist will confirm details and slot this experience into your existing day-by-day plan.
Everything here is hotter than it looks
Stay on the boardwalks without exception — the crust between them is thin and the water beneath is near boiling. Steam drifts across the path and briefly whites out visibility, which is normal. Mornings are cooler and the steam sits heaviest, which photographs best. The Lady Knox Geyser nearby erupts on a fixed daily schedule and is induced, not spontaneous.