Our Graham discovers New Zealand’s White Island is very different to the one back home…
"So I have now reached the eastern lower half of the north island and an area called the Bay of Plenty which really should be called the Bay of Enormousness as it is so huge. In this area there are lots and lots of attractions but one particular thing caught my eye, White Island. At last I thought something with which I am familiar White Island = Isle of Wight. Wrong!!
On the short boat trip out to the White version my suspicions were raised when the guide issued us with yellow hard hats, a la Bob the Builder, plus matching gas masks and then proceeded to tell us what to do in case the island blew up while we there. White Island is in fact a living, working, fully paid up member of the volcano club and this trip was about to take us on to terra eruptus.
Darth Vader, or just daft?
Once you arrive you are immediately met by a strong smell of sulphur, remnants of earlier attempts to mine the mineral and clouds and clouds of steam. The small babbling brooks are in fact boiling brooks as the water is warm enough to cook your eggs in. The guide carefully takes you step by step until you reach the main crater which is about the size of an average village pond but there the similarity ends. The water is roughly 75c, a luminous green colour and steam continuously pours from it. I just about heard the cackles from Beelzebub because this looked like hell on earth.
An absolutely fascinating and enjoyable trip but it was not over yet. On the way back the bay of plenty through up more of its bounty. I have seen Dolphins before at sea but this was no school it was more like the local education authority of dolphins as they came at the boat in huge numbers. They came leaping in sequence in threes, fours plus parent and baby combos. I fully expected one to leap across the boat slap me in the chops a couple of times before saying in flipper schpeel ‘What you looking at?’
The answer would have been ‘an area of truly outstanding beauty and interest’
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