Māori village nestled among hot springs reckoning with the return of foreign tourists

Residents of Whakarewarewa live in a unique landscape reliant on visitors for income – but that comes at an environmental cost

“At the height of summer, we would get maybe 4,000 people a day,” says James Warbrick as he crosses the bridge into Whakarewarewa, a tiny Māori village pocketed between hundreds of steaming, bubbling geothermal pools – a place like no other and one at the heart of New Zealand’s tourism industry.

But today there are no tourists in sight.

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