White Island and environs

Hey again,
My apologies for putting up the photos and then not coming back & writing anything. Its been a bit of a full-on/ laid back week.

1st of all I left Kaitaia on the Friday. I had a toilet stop at Kawakawa, but other than that did it straight. In saying that it still took 5.5hours.

Anyway the next day was Mum's birthday. We had the usual celebratory breakfast, and then casually made our way over to Papamoa. Had a celebratory tea at Mt Maunganui.

The next day Dad & I did a trip to White Island (hence the photos). We had to get up early and go to Whakatane to catch the boat. The trip out was a little uneventful, but at least it was a calm day, and so we didn't feel seasick. It was a bit of a shame that there were no young tourist girls on our boat - it was all middle-aged people.

Anyway, when we got to the island we had to be transferred onto the land by inflatable rafts. They then gave us about a 2 hour tour of the island.

As you can see from the photos there was bubbling mud, a hot pool, and sulphur.

After the tour of the island, we went back to the boat, and had a swim and lunch. Following this they circled the island and headed back to Whakatane. On the way back we saw Dolphins and flying fish - that was awesome. The Flying fish were like model planes and flew about 10 metres.

The rest of my week was spent catching up with friends, doing things that needed doing (such as getting a wheel alignment) and coming back up here. Something cool is that I got a drink-holder for my car - I went to a wreckers, and got the relevant part of the dashboard from a higher-spec model - all for $20. nice.

On the way back here I visited some friends who have got some land above Auckland - awesome.