It was our first real, full day in New Zealand. Getting to Whakatani had taken 40 hours of travel and waiting, during which I got about 7 hours of sleep on the plane. I think we went to bed around 9pm, and although we weren’t able to sleep in, I still woke up that morning in Whakatani feeling 100% better. It was time to dive head first into some serious vacation action. No time to waste. Whoohooo!
Of all the tours we paid to go on, the White Island tour was probably the best value. A 1.5 hour boat ride will take you more than 30 miles off shore to the most active volcano in the country. We could see the island from the beach near the end of the drive to Whakatani. It looked like a ghostly white apparition on the horizon, making us unsure about what we were seeing.
The boat was very nice, and spacious enough that I was surprised how many people got off of it at the island. The crew was pleasant to be around, and along the way they were looking out for whales and dolphins. At one point they alerted us to some flying fish gliding over the water. That was very cool since I didn’t quite believe that flying fish could do anything that resembled flying. The one I saw looked like it had a “wingspan” of over a foot and it glided quickly for what seemed like at least 20 feet. Maree didn’t even believe they existed and so she was acting like she just saw a unicorn.
Nothing says "I'm relaxing on vacation" like a gas mask and hard hat. This is about as cool as i've ever looked though, so I'm considering dressing this way all the time.
Upon arriving at the blasted-open mouth of the volcano, my first impression was that I had crossed into another dimension and had miraculously arrived at the island of Riven, the second, and my favorite, Myst game. So I already considered the day a complete success even though I had just gotten there. When I lived in Washington I stumbled into places over the years that I would be willing to bet money on being the inspiration for some of the locations for the Myst games and I now wondered, staring at the glare of sun off metallic ruins in front of vertical dark cliffs and and dark blue sky, if the creators had at some point been to this crazy version of Mt. St. Hellens drowned by the sea.
Beautiful clear blue water rolled along the cliffs up to the rocky shore where it mixed with sediment and lapped up against incredibly corroded ironworks and concrete. Things looked far older than they actually were. As mentioned, the volcano is active, and constantly producing acidic vapors and corrosive gases that have no pity on metal.
We were taught how to use our gas masks. I had hoped to get to use the old style masks that look apocalyptic but the modern ones worked great without making you sweat or obscuring your vision. All over the place were steam vents infused with sometimes choking clouds of sulfur gas. For more minor clouds our guide gave us delicious hard candies, which worked wonders at neutralizing the effects of the gas. We also were forced to wear hard hats, because the volcano occasionally belches up a car sized boulder or two. Our advice for such an occurrence was to go out on our own and find a big rock to hide behind.
A boiling mudpool.
We were led past vents and boiling mud pools and tricked into tasting the worst water I’ve ever had in my mouth (even the candies could not completely remedy the never ending aftertaste). Eventually were were led to one of the most extreme, world class sights I’ve ever witnessed: a huge lake of pure sulfuric acid, one of the most acidic anywhere. It was a surreal vision in an already surreal place. Some kind of thin, drifting hot mist cast shadows only inches away from the underlying little waves that constantly danced around on the surface. With all the motion it was disturbingly quiet, but also sixty feet below us. There was no one who wasn’t impressed.
The acid lake
A close up with Maree's camera of the far side.
Here is an extra big, stitched panorama that offers about a 110 degree view.
It was very dangerous looking. Concentric fissures dozens of feet from the rim made me feel unsafe about having to walk inside the radius, which we had to do. The lake level is highly variable and sometimes it overflows. Landslides were evident everywhere. Very invigorating. It’s a great place to get rid of a body, but the logistics would be costly.
Extremely corroded thick ironworks and a few concrete walls were all that remained of the sulfur mining operation.
After just the right amount of time we were led back towards the sea where we were shown the ruins. There once was a sulfur mining operation going on with a lot of miserable workers who were stuck on the island for weeks at a time. As expected, they got their asses destroyed.
Back on the boat we were given the opportunity to swim in that nice blue water. I don’t know how I missed this information, probably because of my fatigue the day before, but I was unprepared for swimming, and almost everyone else seemed to be too. Since no one was into it and the sea conditions were unusually good the captain took the rare opportunity to take us all the way around the island. Meanwhile they served us a lite but very well balanced meal including a weird curry egg sandwich which I found to somehow be good. The backside of the island had a lot of trees growing up around an older ghost forest that was killed in a previous eruption and somehow preserved.
A younger lava/pyroclastic flow on top of another.
Older petrified trees killed from the ash of an earlier eruption poked up through newer vegetation.
Fun dolphins.
