Casually walking around a volcano crater

It's not everyday you can say you've walked around the crater of an active volcano. Well this is what we achieved today! After an early wake up we were pleased to find our van started first time despite the cold weather. We layered up and headed to the marina to board our boat for the day. We had a group of school children on board with us who looked about 16 and rather annoyingly they had the most disorganised teacher ever. We waited at least 20 minutes on the boat while she tried to work out why she had one extra person than she should do and what to do with this extra child. Eventually we pulled away from the harbour and headed out to sea. The journey to White Island took about 2 hours but it was rather nicely broken up by spending time watching gannets feeding and being followed by a whole pod of dolphins who were really interacting with the boat. It was a really cool 15 minutes and an added bonus to the whole trip. Eventually we edged closer to this mysterious island that was puffing out steam and gas. We were all geared up in hard hats, gas masks and life jackets before getting taken across to the island in groups of 8 on a small inflatable jet boat. We entered near an old factory where early settlers tried to mine for sulphur. It wasn't too successful apparently and the factory now lies in ruin. The crater had lots of pressure points and mounds which can explode at any moment as the temperature and pressure builds below the surface. We learnt how to spot them and were given strict instructions to follow in the guides footsteps only. Luckily we were split into two groups of 20 or so which made this easier. As we headed further from the beach and closer to the crater's lake the gases really started to build up. We were told to use our masks whenever we wanted and given sweets to suck to stop our throats drying out. Even with the masks on and the sweets it was pretty intense at the back of your throat especially when we stood near some geysers that were emmiting plenty of sulphur. The lake was such a lovely turquoise blue colour but it apparently has been all colours from grey to orange depending on the bacteria that's thriving the most at that time. The volcano has erupted a couple of times in the last 20 years and when this happens it only shoots out ash and hot rocks but not lava. What's amazing is the ash is a different colour each time so you can see the layers built up from different eruptions on cross sections of rock. The last one was red and it was easy to look around and see how much the ash covered the whole area. Our guide has even been on the volcano during an earthquake which sounded incredibly scary. There were some geologists working while we were there and one American woman was obsessed with wanting to speak to them. Of course our guides said we couldn't interrupt them but she continually encouraged her children to wave and take photos of them until they come over. It got quite annoying really, even for us, and in the end it was no surprise when her daughter turned around and said "mum, if you love scientists do much why don't you just become one!" She toned it down a bit after that. After a look around the factory ruins we were soon back on the boat after such an awesome experience. We did a loop around the island and even saw seals on the rocks. On the way back we had a complimentary lunch which was quite extensive before the longest boat journey in the world to get back to shore. A million hours later we were in our van and heading to a campsite out of town for the night. It's turned out to be a home for migrant workers more than a campsite but after such an amazing day it doesn't matter how pants and overcrowded the campsite is!Read more