I am so thankful to the pair we met on the Maori Hangi evening for suggesting travel sickness pills! Having assured Laura the sea wouldn't be choppy - they can't land on the island and so we don't pay, this they wouldn't attempt a choppy journey - we drove North (the opposite direct to our final evening's destination (a 4.5 hour drive South) and joined the crew of Pee Jay and almost 60 passengers for the hour and a half cruise out past Whale Island, some 26 Nautical miles to the ever changing landscape of an active marine volcano - White Island (Whakaari).
It was choppy as hell, made worse by two Korean parents being violently sick into endless sick bags passed to them by the crew. When a young Swede started up, both of us had trouble staying composed.
We were lucky to bump into a large pod of common dolphins, quite different from the bottle-nose dolphines we'd seen in the Bay of Islands. This was a big group and the babies would jump out from the waves whenever they came up for air - its such a wonderful and amazing thing to see them all together, their fins raised from the sea and to hear their sonar squeak and pip on the wind.
Despite the brief encounter we were all relieved to arrive at the only alive volcano, mooring at Crater Bay and docking by rubber dingy. The remains of the old Brimstone factory are the first to greet all visitors from what remains of the tiny quay - all machinery rusted red in the acidic air - the miners' cotton clothes lasted very little time at all!
We were led around the island with searing heat pouring down from the sun and bubbling up or steaming out of the ground. The crew showed us teh ever changing landscape - the ever expanding mudpool, the bright-white and yellow pustule on the side of the mountain, gushing with sulphuric steam - noisy like a firehose turned to full, new cracks and fissures on its wall, and the great acidic lake born out of condensation since only 2000.
It can blow at any time and would do so out of the blue. The lake emerged after a sudden eruption!
While we were there two helicopters circled and landed - more visitors to this acrid, martian landscape. Boiling mudpools, acidic lakes and air, hot streams that taste of blood and the continual threat of sudden mayhem and death.
We survived, though some of the miners didn't. A landslide once wiped out the entire island but for one cat - Peter - who couldn't wait to get back to proper land.
On the drive to Ohakune, we tried a detour to see the locations used for Mordor and Mount Doom - Alas the weather we'd avoided all day finally caught up with us and we could see nothing.
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