Ohope, part 5 - White Island

I looked at this scene just after dawn, and I hoped that we wouldn't get any of that rain during our trip out to White Island. We ate a light breakfast, all took some Sea-Legs pills, and went off to catch our ferry.

 Unfortunately, we did get rain, and wind, and choppy seas. Our captain announced that it was going to take a little longer than usual to reach the island. Oh boy.

 We are finally approaching the island. Unfortunately, both boys had vomited not long ago. They need not feel embarrassed about it. A number of adults did too. Sea sick bags had been handed out all around.  

We then learned that we would be taken to the island by inflatable dinghy. We were the first group of six to make the transfer. Both the ferry and the dinghy were heaving around, but the ships crew knew their job, and we all got aboard without any problems.

We were taken to a high dock with a row of steel ladders attached to the side and climbed up. Doing so from the pitching dinghy was exciting too, but accomplished. We then followed the narrow dock to a line of boulders that we crossed to reach shore.  

We made it. It feels so good to be on solid ground again. 

 This is our ferry from the very narrow beach.

 Looking up toward the rim. Those two dots up there are web cams. 

 We are ready to start our hike. Hardhats on and our gas masks stuffed inside our coats. Rain would clog the paper filters. 

 The girl in the yellow hat is one of the guides. 

As we walk, I look up to our left and see smoke coming from the top of a small cone. It's about 100 feet high I suppose. The rim soars up much higher behind it.

Picture taking time near a large sulphur outcropping

 A vent pouring out gases and heat. This is where some people put on their masks. The wind was blowing most of the gas away from us, but I caught one breath full and coughed. I could feel the heat radiating up.

 Heading up higher to reach the open pool of acid in the main part of the volcano.

 There it is. It's not quite hot enough to boil, but extremely acidic. We were told that it has a negative pH. (that's really strong stuff)  Falling in would be an awful way to go.

(see a note on pH at the end) 

 Further on, we came to two separate springs with water that flowed out of them. We were invited to dip our fingers into the water and taste it. The water was comfortably warm in both springs.  I thought the first tasted very strongly of some metal, maybe iron. Other peoples' comments were that it tasted like blood or copper coins. The second spring was a real surprise. It tasted like salty lemons.

 On our way back to the beach.

Believe it or not, back in the late 1800's and again around 1920, sulphur was mined here and a sort of camp town existed between the rocks and scalding vents. Ten men died one day when an eruption occurred. The last eruption was in 2016. The ruins of the old processing plant are still visible. 

Here are a couple of videos. The first is a general pan of the entire place. The second is standing in front of the pool of acid. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pkaLNRHj27M&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFD5zt7Zuk0&feature=youtu.be

 We were hoping that the return trip would be smoother. It was not. This is looking out a window at the spray being thrown up when the bow slammed down. There was no more throwing up on the way back. The sea sick pills we took first thing this morning did help of course. It's just that the ride out was so overwhelming. 

I mentioned in my first post how proud I was of the boys. Motion sickness is miserable. Instead of letting it overcome them though, they manfully carried on. They got into the dingy, up the ladder to the dock, across the boulders and to land. They took part in the tour of the island. Then, they got back on that pitching boat and stuck it out until we were home. 

These two guys showed they are tough. They were far from happy about the difficulties of the trip, but they salvaged the experience by the attitude they took. My hat is off to them. 

 We were all pretty much whipped when we got home. We rested from the stresses of the day but marvelled, "We battled the elements, we walked on a live volcano, we tasted 'volcano juice', we came through it all."  

We have been where few people have gone. 

The evening was peaceful and the sky beautiful. Allie ran out and brought us a couple of pizzas, which was hungrily devoured. None of us suffered any lasting distress. 

The next morning, before we left for home, I took this shot of the island. I think the folks heading out to tour it today will have a very different experience than we did. 

(that's 30 miles out) 

I do wish our trip could have been fun, and easy, but I also realise that the boys learned a valuable, albeit hard lesson by going through what they did. They proved themselves to be tougher than they might have thought they were. This world can be hard at times and that self-awareness, learned at a young age, may help them manage other difficulties.              

 One last thing, well almost last. The guides told us that the web cams take a picture every 10 minutes. I looked the site up when we got home and I believe I found our tour group moving through the pictures. We were tiny of course, hardly more than a pixel or two, but it was interesting anyway. And, if an eruption or landslide happened, it might be quite exciting to see. This is the site.  Just click on any of the small photos and you'll be shown the date and time stamp.    -djf

https://www.geonet.org.nz/volcano/cameras/whiteislandcraterrim

The very last thing. A quick explanation of pH.

The pH scale measures how acidic or basic a substance is. The pH scale ranges from 0 to 14. A pH of 7 is neutral. (Pure water has pH of 7) A pH less than 7 is acidic. A pH greater than 7 is basic.

The pH scale is logarithmic and as a result, each whole pH value below 7 is ten times more acidic than the next higher value. For example, pH 4 is ten times more acidic than pH 5 and 100 times (10 times 10) more acidic than pH 6. Therefore, if that pool has a negative pH, it is Truly scary stuff.