An early morning start was needed for this trip it started with a coffee to help the wake up process and we had a hour and a quarter trip to get to the wharf, where we found a decent coffee and signed our lives away with paperwork.
I didn’t have the new camera at this stage so all of these photos were taken on my go pro, also shout out to the guys and girls at White Island Tours for putting on a great trip and having good coffee at there cafe.
The big catamaran boat we were to head out on, the weather was calm and so was the water so the day was starting of to be a cracker.
We had been steaming out towards the island for about an hour and we were lucky enough to come across a pod of dolphins which were nice enough to hang around for a little while and play around the boat which was neat to see.
Not a bad view from inside the boat, the water was so flat and comfy seats made for a awesome trip out there.
We unloaded off the big boat into a smaller rubber ducky boat and onto the island for a quick safety briefing and we were on our way around an active volcano.
The crater is barren of any visible life, bacteria would be the only sort of thing that can live in here with the acid making it unsuitable for plants.
Once we made it here the filter masks were necessary at this point, lots of people coughing as the sulphur was quite harsh in the throat which we got given some candy earlier which also helped a lot.
We even got to taste some of the sulphur coming out of the vents, I’m not quite sure how to describe it but it’s a little like lemon sherbet that doesn’t taste that good.
As you can probably tell there is not a huge amount here apart from sulphur and steam with a few rocks thrown in the middle for good measure. The below photo is looking into the current crater, from what thee guides were saying that sometimes these can get blocked and the pressure makes a new one somewhere else.
Tasting some of the water that the miner had to drink, it is not overly nice and the miners had to suffer through this every day.
One of the more expensive ways to make it out to the island, there were a couple of squirrels and new looking euro copter also flying around as well.
What is left of the old factory, the concrete is crumbly so not something you want to touch.
The wood survives quite well or it gets preserved with the sulphur in the air, apparently it’s some sort of American wood that one of the mining companies had bought in for it.
Waiting for the return rubber ducky trip back to the mother ship
Back on the boat lunch was served and a much needed drink after breathing in all the tainted air.
On the outside of the island it had a lot of pohutukawa trees on it in certain spots where the steam from the volcano didn’t touch it.
We steamed back into Whakatane after a lap around the island and caught up with the pod of dolphins we had seen earlier in the day but we didn’t stop for long and soon enough we made it back to dry land.