Handley:
We had done alot of geothermal related activities over the last coupl of days so we were a bit worried that visiting White Island might be a bit samey!
On the trip over to the island, which is also a very active volcano we saw the fin of a sun fish, go google them to see what they look like, I would have liked to see the whole fish, but the fin was still pretty cool.
When we landed on the island it was raining and it felt a bit dismal. We were given our helmets and gas masks which were compulsory whilst on the island:
Our first stop was a massive fumerole - I know we've seen and talked loads about these recently, but this one was massive and a lot more violent than any we had seen before. I'm going to try and play with videos now hope this works and apologies for the shaky hand:
We also saw a bright green pool and had an opportunity to see the old sulphur mine which used to be on the island, but was destroyed in several erruptions:
They showed us some pure sulphur and said we could eat some - I wasn't that keen, but as it looked a bit like honeycomb Michelle was straight in there - apparently it tasted a bit chalky and nothing like a crunchy bar!
The tour guide explained that the last eruption was in 2000 and that there should have been a tour out on the island that day, but the trip was cancelled at the last minute due to bad weather, which was very lucky as a couple of hours later when the tour was due to be on the island it erupted, which would have been pretty serious!
That kind of information makes you wonder how safe you are which was probably their plan to try beef the tour up a little, although the whole place seemed pretty calm and not likely to errupt on our day!
The tour was over and we were back on the boat and we came across a pod of dolphins which we followed for awhile, this got us very excited for tomorrow and our dolphin swim!
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