Visit to the active volcano of White Island, New Zealand

[overscan (PaulMM)]

About 49km offshore from the town of Whakatane is an active Volcano. My stepdad and I visited it on PeeJay's tour. Its about a 6 hour trip all up, with a couple of hours on the island.


If you ever get to New Zealand, I highly recommend going.


The photos don't capture quite how other-worldly this experience is. Two passengers who missed the boat got taken out on speedboat and transferred over via dingy. Dolphins swam alongside and a couple of people saw a flying fish (not me, unfortunately). The island itself is something between the surface of the moon and Mordor.

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

No dock - just a dinghy out to some rusty, twisted metal steps.

 

[GTX]

Been there, done that!

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Being the adventurous type, I tried eating the sulphur crystals (fizzy, a bit like "Asteroid Dust") and drinking from the two freshwater streams. First tasted like blood (lots of iron) and second like lemon juice (acids, presumably

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

The derelict building are the remains of the last attempt to mine sulphur from the island. Previous attempts met unpleasant ends but this last one just went bust. I liked the plucky little bush trying to eke out a living....

 

[overscan (PaulMM)]

Last ones. Dolphins came back to accompany us home but were really hard to photgraph when out of the water - so quick.


So - apologies for the diversion from topic, now lets (bash / worship) the F-35 some more.

 

[CJGibson]

My visit to a New Zealand volcano was a bit more arduous - no shorts and flip-flops for me: winter ice-climbing on Ruapehu. Great views of Mt Egmont.

Chris

 

[hesham]

My dear Paul,


nice pictures,please be careful from that activities,and the Dolphins view is cool.

 

[shedofdread]

Great pictures. Thanks for sharing them. The lack of any form of contentious debate in the thread did however, somewhat throw me Presumably, normal service will be restored ASAP?

 

[Orionblamblam]

The lack of any form of contentious debate in the thread did however, somewhat throw me

For some reason, I am reminded of this...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4j0jM2r2ID4

 

[CJGibson]

OK, contention it is.

You don't want to be chewing on igneous rocks and drinking the stuff running out of volcanoes. People might mistake you for a sedimentologist.

We had one on a job once who licked the samples to differentiate different salts. Guess what we did in the drilling mud?

Chris