Hot Spot

COOKING NATURALLY Maori tradition forbids accurate representation of the human form. But the rough-hewn wooden figures lining the ancestral hall at the Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve, with their bulging eyes and protruding tongues, still manage to make their intentions known. "It's a threatening gesture, meaning, 'I'm going to eat you,'" explains Justin, my Maori guide.

The preferred cooking method would probably have been boiling: this Maori village, home to about 70, sits among geothermally heated pools and is periodically sprayed by two spectacular geysers. These days, locals sell freshly boiled sweet corn, plucked from the simmering pools and naturally seasoned by sulfur dioxide.

The Maori of Whakarewarewa have perfected another cooking method as well: hangi, or steam-cooked, meals. Low stone boxes are built over steam vents and used as ovens. Ned's Cafe, the village restaurant, specializes in hangi, serving up the kind of hearty WWII-vintage meals that gave British food its bad name. But even the luncheon meat and chicken with stuffing comes out moist and pleasant, and made very palatable by the tang of the salts. Dessert, inevitably, is steamed pudding.

It was only a century ago that Maori villagers began to replace their flimsy huts with colonial-style bungalows, but most of them had piped hot water long before the arrival of their European neighbors. Boiling water is still diverted by a system of sluices to communal bathing pools, where the upstream temperatures cool down for a pleasant natural spa soak. Villagers also run cold-water pipes through the scalding pools to the taps in their houses, providing endless free supplies of hot water.

But the earth's massive energy can only be held in check for so long. Growing underground pressure is expected to produce a third geyser some time in the near future, and last year a mud pool suddenly rose like boiling milk and swallowed a road. Visit whakarewarewa.comfor more information.