I've been living an hour drive plus a ninety minute boatride from an active volcano.
Of course I had to go see it! So on one of my Wednesdays off, I drove an hour to Whakatane and then went out to White Island with PeeJay's Boat Tours.
We had some friends who wanted to play on the boat ride out to the island....
The dolphins showing off!
White Island is NZ's only active marine volcano. It's only 2km in diameter. It was named by Captain Cook in 1769 as it always seemed to be in a white cloud of steam (see first photo).
The one side of the island actually has living things! Namely some pohutakawa trees, an herb called "Iceplant" (most of the green you see below is that), and several thousand Australasian Gannet birds (the white patch seen below).
So the tour guides anchored the big boat a bit from shore and taxied us to the island in this lil inflatable jobber.
Some of the tour group arriving on the Island
The white steam in action!
You had to be VERY careful where you walked--- stepping in that crevass would be bad, bad news!
The colours were stunning.
The volcano is estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000 years old. The white crusty areas are crystals of sulfur. We were warned not to step on those either--- the crust could crack and you could fall in to heavens know where!
Here I am up close (but not too close!) with some of the sulfur and steam vents.
(We were required to wear hard hats when on the island--- the gas masks were optional-- but quite official looking for the pics, wouldn't you say?) :)
Look at how tiny the people are!
There isn't any regular lava flow with this type of volcano... but heaps of steam vent activity and bubbling mud, as you can see below. Its last real eruption was in 2000.
This is a partial view of Crater Lake. Don't fall in this puppy either... the pH is somewhere between 0 and 1!
Several attempts were made at mining the sulfur off the island. One long mining stream was halted in the early 1900s after a lahar (kind of like a volcanic mudslide) killed all ten workers.
Here's the remains of the last mining factory- from 1923 til 1933. The endeavour was given up when they weren't finding enough sulfur in the rocks.
It was quite cool to explore all the rusted, eroded factory remains.
What an awesome place!
I'm very fortunate for my opportunity to visit this volcano.
No shakes or eruption craziness while I was there, either. :)
So if you ever get the opportunity to visit a volcano, say volcaYES! It's quite awesome.
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