We got up early, fell asleep again until 6:30am, and rushed to get going at 7am.
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| Dawn at Lake Rerewhakaaitu. |
The journey took us away from Mt. Tarawera down what seemed like a never-ending incline to a valley which we followed all the way to Whakatane. We arrived in plenty of time to register for the boat, and stopped in the cafe for a blueberry muffin. The 'tickets' were disused milk/cream separators from a local farm. As we sat down a local asked me if I was going to do some 'saparating' - he repeated himself after seeing my bemused look and after a 3rd time I had to admit I didn't know what he was talking about. When he described what the device did, I realised he meant 'separating' - it seems like I've lost the ability to understand the kiwi accent. His was fairly broad though. The muffin finished and strongly-accented old man gone we left for the boat. It was apparently purpose-built for the White Island tours in Picton and designed by some bloke I can't remember the name of. It had two standard flushable toilets and two seating areas, one upstairs and one down. Lindsey and I made our way upstairs and waited to set sail. It was not, of course, a sailing boat as we had 49km to travel to the island, once we were underway the crew came round with a cup of soup and a large slab of bread. I was quite full and with the swell we were travelling across I felt a little motion sick. Fortunately Lindsey suggested that we sit downstairs soon after, which was apparently the best place for preventing sickness. The crew came and asked if Lindsey was ok and that she should look at the horizon. She was of course perfectly ok and didn't even know I was feeling slightly off. She will when she reads this though :)
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| White Island boat arriving at White Island. |
The trip to the island took about 1hr30 and was fairly uneventful. When we arrived we were ferried onto the island in an inflatable power boat and split into 2 groups of 10. The island was giving off large plumes of steam which we could see before arriving, and from the beach we made our way to the sources of these plumes. The landscape was very barren as nothing could survive in the very acidic air of the crater. It was however very colourful, yellow from sulphur and blues and greens from various other compounds.
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| White Island as we arrived. |
As we got closer to the massive steam vents, called fumeroles, the steam wafted over us and a large amount of coughing ensued. The steam was highly acidic and made it very difficult to breathe. The gas masks came in handy at this point! It was certainly worth getting close to the fumeroles though, they were spectacular, the noise they made was similar to a jet engine and the vents were producing steam at an incredible rate. There were small streams running past us and the guide invited us to dip our finger in and have a taste. It was not unlike a sour sweet, so I quite liked it! It was in fact hydrochloric and sulphuric acid at about pH 1. We moved away so everyone could start breathing normally again and carried on again through the maze of greenish, steaming mounds, which were apparently hot spots and had a thin surface which could easily be broken if stepped on by an unwary explorer plunging their leg into boiling mud and steam. On our way round there were several pools which looked as though they were boiling when in fact they were simply gas bubbles giving that effect and they were in fact probably luke warm.
The central crater lake however was a different story. It had formed only recently after a period of increased activity in 1976, before which it was possible to walk across the crater in its entirety. This area collapsed at that point and started to fill with water. There were several fumeroles in that part of the crater at that time and once the water covered them the steam condensed in the water and the level rose rapidly. The lake as we saw it was bubbling and vividly green. The guide informed us that it was at pH -0.5, useful for dissolving unwanted guests, and a temperature of 65°C which varied week by week. The green colour was apparently caused by bacteria, life is pretty amazing.
We then moved past the current crater to the old crater which existed before the increased activity in 1976. There was a large fumerole there known as 'noisy Nelly'. We went and stood on some higher ground for photo-taking. I managed to blunder into a shot as it was being taken. We also had the first (second!) and potential last photo of us together when an Aussie offered to take it for us in return for a photo of her. The path back to the beach took us past pools of bubbling mud which can spew hot mud over the region we were standing depending on its consistency. We were safe today though, apparently once a tourist got too close and lost his safety helmet in the mud. The tour operators managed to recover it the day after with a hook and it was bleached of all colour and twisted. The final attraction on the island was the remains of the last sulphur mining operation which ceased in 1933. The metal works were completely corroded and broken, but perhaps surprisingly the large wooden beams had survived remarkably well.
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| Photo of us on White Island. |
We boarded the boat once more and had lunch and left White Island for Whakatane. There was a brief stop on the way when someone thought they caught sight of a whale, but it may have been scared away as the boat was travelling at full speed. When we got back we collected our free bar of Sulphur soap with our token from a magazine and set off on our journey back to lake Rerewhakaaitu after a Boysenberry icecream in the local G&Ds equivalent.
We arrived back at the lake and decided to try the other campsite on the lake, but after we'd got all the cooking equipment out of the van to the sheltered cooking area we found that the water from the taps had run dry. So we went and stayed at the nicer campsite we'd used the night before. Noodles in the rain for tea, then bed ready for another day.
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