The One with the Volcano

We were up at the crack of dawn and on the boat to White Island, an active Marine Volcano off the coast off the Bay of Plenty.

The weather was bright but windy, and we sat at the back of the boat admiring the early morning sun. Sadly this is also where they sent the sea sick people, so as we progressed along, we were joined by more and more green faces.

As we approached the island we were issued with hard hats, and gas masks, and instructed on what to do in the event of an eruption. Quite an uneasy feeling started to creep over me, when our guide said, "and don't forget to put on your gas masks, as if the falling rock doesn't get you the ash and fumes will!" - great!- thankfully these instructions were not needed

We had a 2 hour walking tour around the island, complete with steaming fumaroles, and a large crater lake, again pouring forth steam. The landscape is like something from Mars, and covered with pressure points - a thin crust seperating us from boiling bubbling mud pools.

Nature at it's wildest.

They used to mine the sulphur here, but a couple of eruptions soon put a stop to that, and the remains of the corroding factory are down by the waterfront. The guides here get through so many pairs of sunglasses, shoes and backpacks a year, as anything metal on them corrodes rapidly in the sulphurous air.

Back on the boat, we had lunch, and then back at Whakatane, we journeyed onwards, through Gisborne to Takamoru Bay (1 hour further north on the East Coast) where we would be spending New Year,