Hesitant Steps into the Unknown, Exploring an Active Volcano.

Two once in a lifetime events happened to me in one day! 

My partner and I had booked ourselves to go on a once in a lifetime trip out to experience an active volcano. The trip involved a one and a half hour boat ride out to White Island. This original name is due to the constant white sulphur cloud emitted from the volcano. We were also blessed enough to witness a dolphin Mega-Pod on our boat trip out. My partner had never seen a dolphin in the wild so this was as good as it gets for a first time experience.

White Island

If you have not seen a Mega-Pod before please check out my previous post covering the Mega-Pod which includes a video of the event as well. It is well worth a look here:  https://steemit.com/life/@silvernova/i-witnessed-the-ocean-erupt-with-dolphins-a-mega-pod

The Tour

We would then jump on a little inflatable boat, make our way onto the island and experience a guided walk and tour around the island, crater and old destroyed mining settlement. 

The old miners jetty we used to dock and clamber onto the island.

The view from the beach looking towards the crater

Hell On Earth

They used to mine for sulphur here back in the day, and yes there were some of the early settlers lost to the elements. This place could easily be described as hell on earth! There are hot spots and crusts that if stood on would break away killing anybody who was walking on top. There is a constant smell of sulphur which burns the nasal passages. We were handed gas masks, and as much as I thought I wouldn't need it, there were times where breathing without it was impossible. 

This is one of the vents, you can see the fluorescent yellow of the sulphur build up.

Crater Lake (Puddle)

The crater itself has had a few facelifts in recent times due to eruptions, and now the crater lake is more of a crater puddle. This is due to its last reasonable eruption a couple of years ago, where the whole crater was changed and its lake was all but left destroyed.

White Islands Active Crater Lake

Like Settling Mars

The landscape was barren and desolate. It is hard to imagine workers living out on the island for six months at a time. They would often return home with black discoloured teeth due to the exposure of sulphur and other gasses. There was even a story of one of the workers who disappeared, the only remains they found were his boots next to the crater lake. They also drunk the water here while they were on the island, and the water is very acidic and was obviously not very healthy.

The barren Martian landscape that greeted the miners every morning 

Even Buildings Decompose

The settlement and mining operation were abandoned some time ago after an eruption killed all of the workers on the island at the time. There is a tale amongst the locals that the only survivor of that eruption was the camps pet cat. Who after a little while was relocated to live out its days on the mainland.

The crumbled remains of the mining operation and settlement

Rust, Rust and More Rust

The operation itself is a sight to behold. The sulphur and volcanic conditions have really effected the decomposition of things on the island. Everything metal has been completely turned into rust, layers upon layers of rust BUT the conditions have almost preserved the Californian Pine that was used in the construction almost as well as if it was fresh. The tour guide did mention that while the wood was extremely well preserved in this environment, any wood that has been removed from the volcanic condition has virtually disintegrated away to nothing in the space of a couple of weeks.

The rusted remains of mining equipment

A rusted tyre showing how dilapidated the metal is compared to the preserved rubber with the 1963 still legible. 

This is the timber still preserved from the settlement.

Wrapping Up A Day On An Active Volcano

Hopefully the photo's here offer a bit of an insight into exactly what it is like on one of our New Zealand volcanos. They are a different type of volcano that the lava flowing ones found in Hawaii, and instead of lava flows, they tend to shoot lava bombs up into the air when they erupt. These come crashing down in sort of a clumpy fashion. To illustrate how much debris is dumped here, one one of the settlement photo's you can see the doorway. The roof to this camp did not disappear until around 30 years ago. There has been roughly 2-3 foot of material dumped into the ruins since then. That is why the doorway seems so small.

I hope you enjoyed the photo's, I definitely enjoyed getting out to take them, and also if you haven't all ready, I would recommend watching the Mega-Pod video too.