White Island

Volcano day! We hadn't heard about this before we left but were looking forward to it and a bit nervous.

The boat was nice and once the safety talk and the 'if you feel sick' speech was finished, we were underway. We sat at the front outdoors when it started to go up and down really badly! Within about 5 minutes of that starting the first person was being sick, within 10 minutes 5 people were being sick and so on. I lasted about 30 minutes before chundering and Emma lasted about an hour! The remaining hour was unbearable! The boat was going up and down so much, some people shrieked when we went over one wave, the whole boat shuddered and sounded like it had snapped in half!! The waves were fun at first but I wanted someone to turn off the wave machine after 15 minutes!! The staff were super good though. They were taking peoples sick bags and handing out towels to clean their sticky faces (us included!). They said the crossing was 'moderate' and the day before had been much worse!

We arrived at White Island with relief but also apprehension as we were standing on an active volcano wearing a hard hat and a gas mask round our necks for protection!! The guide didn't make us feel any better when she said it last erupted in 2003 and also that it's not a lava volcano it was the type that explodes and fires rocks at the speed of a bullet!

It was such a surreal place with vents blowing noisily from the rocks. Streams were bubbling and were brightly coloured. The main crater lake (which was a new thing and they're not sure why it appeared) was green and had a acidity measure of -2 on the PH scale. It was difficult to breath around the lake so we put on our masks.

We walked round the crater for about 2hour (it was pretty big!!), including an abanded sulphur factory that was distroyed by a landslide in the 30's. Because of the acidic air some things had been presevered, whilst others had erroded away. The tractor's tyres were still completely in tact!

The guide was very informative and had been doing the tour for 5 years!

We had a pretty good lunch and headed back out to sea. The ride back was really smooth compared. The skipper was able to ride the waves rather than heading into them. As a result no-one was ill.

It was an absolutely amazing experience and hopefully the photos go some way to displaying what it was like as it's so hard to explain how amazing it was!!

We decided to head to Lake Taupo as it wasn't that far. We even forgot it was valentines day in all the excitement and we went for a 3 course meal at... The Welshman! It even played Welsh songs which was nice especially as we beat Scotland (convincingly!!).

The next day we headed to Hukka falls which is the most visited attraction in the whole of New Zealand!

White island photos



Lake Taupo photos