White Island

It will have to be a quick blog today as the wifi costs on this campsite leave something to be desired!!  That will teach me to log on and read emails before writing up the current day's blog :-(

Today was White Island - a trip to an active volcanic island, some 20km off the coast of New Zealand.  The journey out took about 90 minutes, at one point accompanied by a large school of very friendly, very energetic dolphins.  I must be about the only person on board the ship who didn't manage to get a decent photo of them - I'm really not quite sure how I did that!

Once on the island, we were provided with gas masks and hard hats and split into groups.  Hard hats were compulsory although in the event, unneeded.  Gas masks were really just in case the sulphur fumes got too strong for you, you could manage without if you really wanted to.  We then walked around inside the older areas of the crater and saw a completely different world.  There were fumiroles spouting steam like there was no tomorrow, huge pits of boiling mud and water.

There were sulphur piles and collapsed sulphur piles, leaving a fantastic yellow tint to the ground.

The main crater lake is apparently so acidic that it has a negative value on the litmus scale.  The whole crater landscape was so alien that after we'd been walking there for 30 minutes, you could have easily convinced me we were on the moon.  Of course that could have been some sort of effect of breathing in so much sulphur.....maybe I should have worn the gas mask more.....

After the walk it was time to get back on the boat and come home - no dolphins this time, but we did see a shoal of flying fish and I did (just) manage to capture one of them on film! [Prizes for the people who can spot the fish in the photo]

Finally, it was my last long drive of the holiday, up to Auckland.  A city day is planned for tomorrow (small matter of a speeding ticket to pay) and I've booked on to an America's Cup Sailing Yacht for the afternoon as Auckland is supposed to be the City of Sails.  And in the evening, I'm meeting up with the nephew of my A-level German teacher for dinner.  I'm going to have to dust off my conversational skills though, as apart from the occasional call home, I don't think I've had more than a 10 minute conversation with anyone since the first night in NZ when I went for dinner with Pen & Alex!  Oh, I guess there was Terry the guide for my Tongariro walk....but then I was paying him....he had to talk to me :-)