Hong Kong

Only hours before I was to go to the airport to catch my flight to Auckland and then to Hong Kong, I received an unwanted call from Air New Zealand. The customer service representative explained that the plane that I would be flying on that evening had experienced mechanical trouble and although the flight would still go, they were replacing the original aircraft with a smaller one. The customer service representative painted a picture of hundreds of people now needing to be rerouted because there weren’t enough seats on the smaller aircraft for everyone and I was one of those lucky people. I responded that I really didn’t want to be rerouted because I wanted the time in Hong Kong, and although they still would not put me on the original flight, the routed me through Shanghai and then on a Chinese Airline to Hong Kong. However, my travel agent told me a different story when I contacted her. She told me that there were only a few people being bumped and that I should get to the airport early to see if I could get onto the original flight.

I arrived at the airport early, but anyone who has checked in for an international flight on Air New Zealand in Christchurch can vouch that quick is not a word that one would use to describe the agents that check people into international flights. I waited for a while and when I did get to the desk, I tried to get on the original flight. The agent walked me over to ticketing to see what could be done, but to no avail, I was going to Shanghai and would arrive in Hong Kong with only a few hours to spare before my next flight. (I have made my peace with Air New Zealand since then, but it was really disappointing at the time.) The agent was very nice and she even offered me access to the lounge to make up for the problems which I appreciated. I must say, if you ever get the chance to go to the lounge in Christchurch, definitely do it. It was a really nice series of rooms made with wood and stone materials. There were scrumptious pastries, small snacks, coffee and lots of wine for the customers to help themselves to during their stay. In the rush to get to the airport, I had forgotten to eat dinner, so I was very happy with the spread.

My flight to Shanghai departed at 11PM and I arrived in at 8AM. I have never shown up in China without a visa before and never expected to do so, but it wasn’t an issue since I was only staying in the airport. When I reached the immigration officer, I was asked to wait to one side until I was collected by another officer who issued me a transit visa. Unfortunately, I was only in Shanghai for four hours, so I didn’t have time to take the Maglev train into the city which would have been a treat. Instead, I checked in for my China Eastern flight and discovered that although Air New Zealand has put a hold on the seat for my flight, they had failed to give China Eastern the billing code or something like that and so my reservation had been canceled. Unless something could be done, I would be stuck in Shanghai without a flight. Fortunately, China Eastern got me on the plane which was otherwise fully booked. Unfortunately, China Eastern put a new luggage tag on my bag that was only to Munich, not to Istanbul, something that would later haunt me. So, after just a whistle stop in Shanghai, I was off to Hong Kong.

The last time that I was in Hong Kong was seven years ago when I broke my ankle while teaching in Yantai, China. WorldTeach, the organization through which I was teaching, flew me down to Hong Kong to see a specialist because I was getting mixed diagnosis in Yantai. My visit at that time was only for a few days and being on crutches had reduced my mobility a bit. This trip unfortunately would be even shorter, but so I was just hoping to eat some dim sum, to look at the architecture in Hong Kong, to take the ferry to Kowloon and then to wander the streets until it was time to go. However, due to the stop in Shanghai, I did not arrive in the city center until close to 3PM.

To get from the airport, I took the Airport Express train which makes the trip from the airport to the city center in only 24 minutes. In addition to the main line, there is now also a spur to serve Hong Kong Disneyland which opened in 2005. The special, Disney themed cars can carry up to 10,000 people per hour. Hong Kong Disneyland is the smallest of the five kingdoms and the resort was built with many settings following the rules of Feng Shui. However, the park is expected to expand over the next fifteen years to reduce the complaints of overcrowding.

During my prior visit, I had found a fantastic dim sum restaurant that was multi-floored and each floor was bustling with people. Waiters would wander though the restaurant with carts of wooden baskets of dim sum with different treats inside and you would simply indicate that you wanted a basket to have it added to the pile on your table. Each basket held three or four dim sum, depending on what was wrapped inside. I had wanted to return to the same restaurant and although I had an inclination as to where it was located I was so hungry by the time that I arrived that I decided to go to a restaurant near the train station that the guide book had highly recommended. The dim sum in the restaurant I chose was unbelievable, but I had arrived mid afternoon just as the bustle was ending and so at one point I was the only one in the restaurant. And this restaurant had its patrons order off a menu rather than a cart, so it was not as much fun as the time before, but still good.

After breakfast / lunch, I walked along one of the many overhead walkways that connect the buildings in Hong Kong till I arrived at the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank (HSHC) headquarters which opened in 1986 after seven years of construction. The building was designed by Lord Norman Foster and was based upon the principles of Feng Shui as are many of the buildings in Hong Kong. According to Feng Shui, the old Government House should be accessible in a straight line by foot from the main point of arrival on the island, the ferry terminal, but the location of the HSHC building would interrupt this line. To prevent this violation of Feng Shui, the entire HSHC building was designed to be raised off the ground and supported on eight groups of giant pillars so that people can walk under the building. One can stand under the building and look up through the glass floors through the large atrium that occupies the first three floors.

Because the area under the building is protected from the strong afternoon sun, it has become a very popular meeting place for the Filipino house cleaners on Sunday, their day off. When I arrived on Sunday afternoon, there were people sitting on blankets or mats which covered every available square centimeter of the shade with the exception of clearings where people could walk. People chatted, ate, had their hair done and generally enjoyed their day off.

From the HSHC building, I wandered over to the tram going up to Mt Victoria which offers fantastic views of Hong Kong and Kowloon on nice days, but was met by a huge queue. The last time that I was in the city, I was able to walk right up to the tram to get on, but that was a rainy weekday. I would have really liked to have gotten views of the city from the peak, but my short schedule prevented it and I would have to be content with my photos from before.

I made my way down to the Star Ferry which has been described as one of the “greatest ferry rides in the world” by the Rough Guides because it offers great views of both Hong Kong and Kowloon as it makes the seven minute journey across the very polluted harbor. Once on the Kowloon side, I went over to the observation decks on the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront where crowds were taking photographs of the Hong Kong skyline. Every night on which there is good weather, at 8PM, there is an orchestrated light and laser show featured on buildings on both sides of Victoria Harbor. The show is called Symphony of Lights and is put on by the Hong Kong Tourism Board and has been declared by Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s largest, permanent light show. Unfortunately, I had a geocache to find and then I would need to be making my way to the airport and so I didn’t get to see the show.

I stopped by the tourist information office to inquire about the station for the train to the airport and learned that there was a free shuttle to the station from a nearby hotel. Free shuttle? I was on it. The woman in the office marked on a map where the station was located and I set off in search of a quick bite to eat. Fortunately, I decided to pursue the station stop first because it turned out to be impossible to find. I was on the correct street and I actually saw the shuttle twice, but I could not find the stop. I walked all over looking for the stop with my heavy backpack on my back and fear of arriving at the airport late on my mind, but to no avail. I broke down and started to inquire in the various hotels nearby as to where the station was as the time that I had planned to catch the shuttle drew near and then passed. In a panic because I do not like showing up to the airport late, I decided to cross back to Hong Kong where I knew the location of the train station. I was walking along one street when I just happened to spot a sign for the bus I wanted. The sign was inside the parking garage of one of the hotels which clearly explained why I had not seen it before. I allowed ten minutes for the shuttle to arrive before I ran out and grabbed a cab, but it came and I made it to the train station.

The airport train is really well setup because as soon as I entered the station, I was directed to a check in counter for the various airlines. I went up to the Lufthansa counter to check in and fortunately inquired about the destination of my checked bag which was still at the airport. As I feared, the bag was only going to Munich, not to Istanbul. The woman behind the counter was very nice and called baggage to ask if they could find my bag and to put a new baggage ticket on it to make sure that it went to Istanbul. I waited for about 20 minutes after which I received confirmation that my bag was found and I hopped onto the train.

Being my second time in Hong Kong, I knew to look after the immigration form that I was issued upon arrival because I needed it to leave the country. Once I was through security, I had to get to my gate. Hong Kong is a really big airport with 80 gates in a row. I had forgotten this fact and I really had to walk quickly to finally get to my gate as my plane was boarding. The flight to Munich would be an overnight flight and I would have a few hour layover before taking my next flight to Istanbul the next morning.

Inter-Noise 2007

The very long delay since I last wrote about my travels has been due to being quite busy with my research. Unfortunately, I have not had the time to write about the travels that I made in April with Jess in New Zealand, let alone random happenings in Christchurch. The obscene number of hours that I was spending in the lab or in the library with my laptop (I found that the law school library is a great place to hide so no one can find me) were triggered by preparations for Inter-Noise, the international noise and vibration conference that I have been attending for the past few years.

Unlike past years, this year I would be submitting a paper to be delivered at the conference. However, a delay in obtaining the equipment and parts that I needed for my research left me with few choices for what to write. The paper was due on June 1 and although I did scratch up enough information to submit a paper, I was not happy with it and so wanted to be able to really do something in time for the presentation of my work in August. The presentation does not have to be exactly like the paper and so I wanted to be able to present some new work, especially since the top people in the world from my field would be at the conference. I was trying to prove a new idea and I needed a lot of experimental data to back up my claim. Most of the measurements had to be made at night or over the weekend when the building in which I work is quiet. I was trying to measure small variations in vibration and so even little things like someone walking up the nearby flight of stairs or turning on a machine would force me to repeat measurements. However, despite my precautions, all of the data that I accumulated turned out to be riddled with measurement uncertainty. The brand new measurement equipment that the department had purchased from one of the best acoustics companies turned out to be bad.

I painstakingly detailed the problems and after a lot of correspondence with the company that made the equipment, they finally agreed that there had been problems during production and has since refunded the cost of the equipment. I feel good that I got blood from a stone, but that does little to make up for all the data which was lost. So, for the presentation that was to be delivered, I had to spend a lot of time in the lab to redo enough of the experiments to back up what I would be saying. Fortunately, the week before I was due to leave, things began to work and I pulled together a presentation to deliver. Whew.

On 25 August, I left Christchurch on what would literally be a trip around the world. The conference itself was to be held in Istanbul, Turkey. The travel from Christchurch would require a long stopover in Hong Kong which I planned to take advantage of by exploring the city for a day. After the conclusion of the conference, I would stay in Istanbul for an extra day to attend a wedding to which I had been invited. Then off to Western Europe to visit friends and colleagues in six countries before beginning my trip west, including stops in the US and Canada. In all, the journey that I am about to describe covered eleven countries on four continents over a period of five weeks. There would be sixteen flights including three over 11 hours long and dozens of hours on trains including a night train. I am extremely lucky to be able to have made the trip, to have the time, to have an adviser who was keen to have me take a holiday and to have funding available to cover the transportation expenses.

What I noticed during the trip was that going to a new country no longer phases me like it used to do. While waiting for a train in France, I realized that I was excited to visit friends and to go out exploring, I wasn’t nervous or excited to be travelling in yet another country. I still love the exploring and the adventure in the travel, but the highs and lows which can be very high and very low when you are in a foreign place are smoothing out. I still have really good and really bad experiences, but I take them more in stride. In a way, that in itself is cool because it means that I have become so seasoned that I can go to Hong Kong, Istanbul or Frankfurt and make my way without problem. But, on the other hand, the adrenaline and nervousness during my early days of travel which could be annoying when they interfered with my ability to function or to adapt will also be missed.

I also found that the hop across the Atlantic from Europe to the US which used to feel like a long flight is just a few hours in a plane. After making the hop from LA to New Zealand or New Zealand to Shanghai, Europe seems very close geographically to the US.

This was also the first time that I had travelled so heavy. I was carrying my laptop and SLR on my back in addition to my suit and nice clothes for the conference and then more comfortable clothes for the rest of the trip. Never do I want to travel that much with that much stuff again!

Dolphins off the Coast of Kaikoura Videos

In March, several of us traveled up to Kaikoura, about two hours north of Christchurch. Several people went on a whale watch cruise which came upon a pod of dolphins. These videos of dolphins were taken by Gerke.





Købe fans need fear not, he was there, too

Auckland

After we returned from our fantastic trip to White Island, we checked into the comfortable Tourist Court Motel in Whakatane. This was the first motel that we had stayed in during our travel and it was wonderful. The room was large, we had a kitchen and the staff was friendly. It was perfect after so many days on the road and so many hostels. We went into town for a while, but discovered that the downtown closed up around 5PM which was disappointing.

The next day, we packed up our bags, bid farewell to the friendly owners and headed west along the Pacific Coast Highway which hugs the coast along the Bay of Plenty. We were driving through kiwi land including Te Puka, the self proclaimed kiwi capital of the world. We therefore had to stop off at Kiwi 360, an unabashed kiwi experience which offers tours of kiwi orchids, helicopter rides over said orchids, a giant kiwi out front that can be climbed and of course, a gift shop full of unique, kiwi derived merchandise such as kiwi wines, clothes and the Golden Kiwi. The Golden Kiwi is similar to the normal, green kiwi, but has a yellow interior and a smooth skin without the fur of its green cousin and has pointed ends. The Golden Kiwi is the product of plant breeding and was introduced to the US in 1999 from New Zealand. The kiwi itself was introduced to New Zealand in 1904 when a school teacher planted the first “Chinese Gooseberry”. The fruit flourished and is now one of the country’s major exports.

We didn’t take any of the tours at Kiwi 360, but we did wander over the kiwi vineyard next to the parking lot to take photos of the fruits on the vines. Kiwis are delicate fruits and therefore are grown between tall trees that serve as break winds. The break winds make it impossible to see the kiwis from the highway and so the vineyard was the only chance that we got to catch a glimpse of the fruits during our whole trip.


We continued on and after driving on one lane highways for most of our trip, we got onto a real highway about 50km south of Auckland, New Zealand’s largest city. Approximately one million people, or a quarter of the population of New Zealand lives in the city of Auckland. The city is the world’s largest Polynesian city with twenty percent of the population either claiming Maori descent or decent from migrants who arrived from the Pacific islands. Geographically, the sprawl of the city straddles a thin strip of land between the Pacific Ocean and the Tasman Sea and it is only a few kilometer walk to get from the harbor on one side to the harbor on the other. To the east lies the Haitemeta Harbor which is the city’s deep harbor port which fills with sailboats during the summer, earning the city the name “City of Sails”. Auckland was host to the Americas Cup over the summers of 1999-2000 and 2002-2003. Looking out into the harbor, one can see islands and extinct volcanoes rising from the water. The city was built amongst fifty extinct volcanic cones and is dotted with parks and green areas, often around the volcanic cones.

The highway we were driving on took us within a kilometer of our hostel and after some planning using my GPS, we were able to pull up in front of the Verandahs where we would be spending the last nights of our trip. Sue had found this hostel online and it was really nice and the owner was friendly. He asked us what we did and after I told him that I am studying for my PhD in building acoustics, he told me about a problem that he is having with the noise of a nearby bar. In addition to the hostel, he owns two other buildings which he would like to make into more rooms and his residence, but a nearby bar makes a terrible racket at night. He inquired about different windows that he could use and how to give his walls a better transmission loss. Sue and I unfortunately, got to hear the noise that night. The sound system of the bar sounded as if it was in our room in the wee hours of the morning which was horrible.

Our hostel was conveniently located about a fifteen minute walk from downtown and in the trendy Ponsbony neighborhood which is regarded as being on the cutting edge of Auckland’s food scene. There were restaurants featuring foods from all over Polynesia and beyond. One night Sue and I tried a Malaysian restaurant which was really good and hopefully a good sample of what we will be having next January. Also nearby was Karangahape Road (K’ Road) which is both praised by urban planners due to its shopping renaissance and maligned by opponents to its seedier parts.

Once we checked in, we headed downtown to see the sights. Dominating the skyline of the city center is the concrete Skytower which was built in the 1990’s and is currently New Zealand’s tallest structure at 328 meters in height. There are of course skywalks where one can look out through the windows to get great views of the surrounding city. Part of the fun is that sections of the floor in the observation tower are made of glass. Signs assure the visitors that the glass is thick and therefore as strong as concrete, but it truly is a bit nerving to be standing on glass and watching people scurrying about far below you. Since this is New Zealand, the tower of course offers chances for adventure experiences. There is the Skyjump where “daredevils who love life” can pay to jump off of the tower for a mere $195. The jump is a base jump by wire and the speed of the jump is controlled at 75 km per hour. Guide wires prevent the jumper from being blown about the building and the jumper is slowed to a gentle stop to land on a tower at the base of the Skytower. If a jumper runs back up the tower without taking off their jumpsuit, the next jump is only $75. There is also an adventure called Vertigo Climb where people pay $95 to climb up through the narrow spire of the TV tower to reach a small platform that is at 270m. It sounds tame, but the climber must wear helmets, overalls and a body harness and must pass a test in a simulator before being allowed to climb.

On the morning of Sunday, January 28 we took the last of our bags out of our rental car to get it ready to be returned that morning. However, first we drove the car to a nearby church for services. I was driving and was already stressed about what we would be charged for the dings in the windshield which may have been why I misjudged a curb while parking, destroying one of our plastic hubcaps. Fantastic. After church, we went to the Domain, an area of semi-formal gardens arranged over the profile of an extinct volcano. The Domain was set aside as the city’s first park in 1840’s and a volcanic spring in the park was the city’s first water supply. The park is also home to the Auckland Museum which was originally built as a World War I monument and today holds one of the world’s finest collections of Maori and Pacific art.

After some time in the park, it was time to face the music when we returned to car to the rental agency. Renting the car had worked out beautifully because we could both fly out of Auckland, leaving the car behind. Otherwise, if it had been my car, I would have been looking at a very long drive as well as a ferry crossing in order to get it home. Now, we just had to see how much the damage would cost. At the counter, I explained that I had just shattered the hubcap and that it was in the trunk. The agent left us inside the office as he went out to check on the car. You have no idea how much of a relief it was when he came back in and told us that everything looked fine and that if we were billed for the hubcap, it would only be a $10 charge and that it was most likely that we would not be billed. After we left the office, I had to sit down for a minute after all of the stress that we would be charged hundreds of dollars for the windshield.

After lunch in a park, we took a ferry across Auckland harbor to Devonport, one of Auckand’s oldest suburbs. A naval station was one of Devonport’s earliest residents, followed by wealthy merchants who built fine villas along the quiet streets. The streets of the downtown area are lined with restaurants, cafes, galleries and stores for knickknacks. After wandering about, we climbed up Mt. Victoria which is one of two ancient volcanoes in the area to get views of the harbor and the city. It was a nice way to spend our last afternoon.

Once back at the backpackers we went out to dinner and then started the task of packing. Sue flew out the next morning back to Boston via Honolulu and I flew back to Christchurch. We had jammed a lot into our three weeks of touring about New Zealand. From fjords to glaciers to walking inside active volcanoes to kayaking to tramping on beaches, it seemed more like ten months than only three weeks. Thank you to Sue for being my first visitor in New Zealand. She was a saint for putting up with me for that long, for not letting me ditch the rental car and for putting up with some bad music and “eat your weight in yogurt” days (it was far cheaper to buy a big container of yogurt than two small ones which meant that we either finished the container before we left in the morning or threw it in the bin. Not being ones to waste food, we at a lot of yogurt).

White Island

White Island is the name of an active volcano located in the Bay of Plenty, about 50km off shore from the town of Whakatane. White Island was given its name by Captain Cook who was the first European to see the see the island. In his logbook, it is noted that “We called it White for as such it always appeared to us.”

The island was formed about 200,000 years ago by the motion between the Indo-Australian Plate and the Pacific Plate which resulted in superheated rock being driven up through the ocean floor. The island is only about 324 hectares in size with three cones currently visible. The active cone is located in the center of the island while the older ones have been worn down by erosion over time. The volcano continues to be active and between 1976 and 1981 two new craters were formed and 100,000 cubic meters of rock was ejected.

Reverend Henry Williams was the first European to arrive in 1826. He described lakes of boiling substances and bodies of smoke with the stench of brimstone. However, the Maori made use of the island long before the Europeans did, catching sea birds on the island and using sulfur collected on the island as a fertilizer for their gardens. The Maori used the steam vents on the island to cook the birds to eat while they worked. Ownership of the island was claimed by both the Maori and the Crown, but it was a Danish sea captain who somehow gained ownership. The ownership of the island then changed hands several times until the New Zealand Manure & Chemical Company (an advertising company worked long and hard on that name) took control of the island with the intention of producing both fertilizer and sulfur ore. However production was abandoned after Mt Tarawera in Rotorua erupted and it was feared that White Island would erupt as well. Production resumed in 1898 but after the fourth year, the production had decreased so much that the enterprise was abandoned.

Ownership of the island again changed hands, but the island was left alone until another attempt to mine sulfur was made in 1913. The workers lived on the island and slept at night in a camp on one of the beaches. However, a massive lahar occurred in 1914, wiping out all of the buildings on the island as well as the men who were working and living there. (A lahar is a mudflow composed of pyroclastic material and water that flows down from a volcano. Lahars are powerful forces capable of moving great quantities of debris - house-size boulders, trees, etc. for long distances in a short amount of time. They look and behave like flowing concrete and destroy or incorporate virtually everything in their path. Lahars can be extremely dangerous, because of their energy and speed. Large lahars can flow several dozen meters per second and can flow for many kilometers, causing catastrophic destruction in their path. One such lahar happened just recently on Mt Ruapehu on 19 March, 2007.) No one knew that the lahar on White Island had occurred until a local arrived on the island to sell food to the workers. While walking through the crater, he realized that everything looked different and that all of the men had disappeared without a trace.

Production was stalled for a time, but was resumed once more in 1923 by a new venture that was fairly successful. Production continued for ten years until the company went bankrupt in 1933. A local family then acquired the island and this same family still owns the island today. The New Zealand government tried to buy the island in 1952, but the Buttle family was unwilling to sell (which turned out to be a very good financial decision). Instead a compromise was reached and the island was declared a private scenic reserve. Today, access to the island is restricted to those using one of four tour operators. Everyone who sets foot on the island must pay a fee to the Buttle’s which is included in the cost of the cost of the tour.

The primary means of gaining access to the island is to book a tour through White Island Tours which sails people out to the island on one of two boats. The cost of the tour includes the boat ride, the tour guides as well as tea and lunch. The whole tour is really well done and everyone was quite pleased with it. The full cost of the tour is refunded if the boat is unable to land on the island due to rough seas. However if the volcano erupts prior to landing on the island, making a landing too dangerous, no refund is given.

When Sue and I had called to make a booking on the boat, we had been worried about getting a spot, but luckily there were spaces. We left Rotorua at about 6:30 AM and were in the town of Whakatane on the coast by 8 for the 8:15 launch. There are two sailings each day, but we had booked the earlier one because it was supposed to have calmer seas and I was glad that we did. We had a smaller boat than the later tour, but for most of our tour we were the only ones on the island which was great for photos. Plus it started raining at the end of our tour so it was nice to be leaving when that started. Our fellow passengers were mostly from Europe and we were approximately 20 people not including the crew.

During the 80 minute trip to the island, a pod of dolphins was spotted and our boat stopped so that we could see them. There were about twelve dolphins in the pod including a baby. The dolphins made pass after pass by our boat, jumping out of the water and frolicking around us. It looked like they wanted to play all day, but we had a volcano to visit and so we resumed our voyage.

During our trip, I spoke with our tour leader who told me that he could see the island on the horizon. However, all that I could see was haze. As we began to near the island it became apparent that the island had been shrouded in steam from the crater. Our boat neared the island and worked its way around to the harbor used by the sulfur mining companies. The small harbor was formed where the rim of one of the craters had collapsed, creating a hole in the steep walls of rock to allow passage to the interior of the carter. The ocean water in the harbor had a yellowish hue to it, due to the sulfur spread all over the sea floor. Beyond the crater wall, we could see the remains of a concrete building and steel gears and equipment strewn about.

Each of the passengers was issued a hard hat and a gas mask. We had to wear the hard hat at all times on the island and we were instructed to use the gas mask if we had a difficult time breathing on the island or if we were caught in fumes from one of the vents due to a wind change. Gasses typically released by volcanic systems include water vapor (H20), followed by carbon dioxide (C02) and sulfur dioxide (S02). Volcanoes also release smaller amounts of others gases, including hydrogen sulfide (H2S), hydrogen (H2), carbon monoxide (CO), hydrogen chloride (HCL), hydrogen fluoride (HF), and helium (He). Sulfur dioxide (SO2) is a colorless gas with a pungent odor that irritates skin and the tissues and mucous membranes of the eyes, nose, and throat. Sulfur dioxide chiefly affects upper respiratory tract and bronchi. The World Health Organization recommends a concentration of no greater than 0.5 ppm over 24 hours for maximum exposure. A concentration of 6-12 ppm can cause immediate irritation of the nose and throat; 20 ppm can cause eye irritation; 10,000 ppm will irritate moist skin within minutes. I can write from experience that exposure to the SO2 gives you a tingling feeling at the back of the throat and you feel like your windpipe is constricting. To counter this, in addition to the gas masks we were given hard candies to suck on. We the passengers had our gas masks and small exposures to the poisonous and corrosive gasses wouldn’t have a long term effect on our health. But, what about the guides who couldn’t wear the masks and talk at the same time and who were exposed to the gasses every day?

Because our boat could not approach the rocky shore, we were given life jackets and took turns being ferried by rubber boat to an old, concrete dock. Once we were on the island we could peer into what lay inside of the crater walls. Beyond the remains of the sulfur mining operation, we could see the high walls of one of the older craters which formed most of the island. The rock walls were stained white, yellow, red and orange. Within the crater, we could see heaps of rock and stone with steam and mists rising beyond from multiple vents and the crater. The guide pointed out cameras located up on the lip of the crater which are used by scientists to monitor the volcanic activity. However, there was likely to be little to no warning if an eruption were about to begin.

Since there was no way of knowing when an eruption would occur, we were instructed by the guides as to what we should do if an eruption started during the tour. We were told that when the volcano had erupted in the past, it wasn’t lava that had come out of the crater but pyroclastic bombs. The bombs could be as large as a car and in the past they had been sent hundreds of feet into the air. If this were to occur, we were to run behind one of the piles of rock to wait until we were told it was safe to move. In the meanwhile, the crew of the boat would be frantically moving the boat away from the island to prevent it from being sunk by the bombs, leaving us with no way off of the island. Once the bombs stopped flying, they would try to maneuver back to the island to get us. In the case where the water in the crater suddenly rose, we would be faced with a lahar of boiling acid coming at us. I actually don’t remember what we were to do in that case, but I cant think of too many options. The guide had told me that there had been tremors on the island only a few days ago that measured 4.0 on the Richter scale, but these had been determined to be seismic in nature, not volcanic. But basically, we were taking a risk walking about in the crater of an active and unpredictable volcano.

We began our walk into the crater and we were instructed to follow the guides along the trails. Periodically, the ground was marked by white, crystal covered mounds that rose from the ground like bubbles in the crust of a pizza. The mounds were about a meter or larger in diameter and up to 1/2 meter high. There were also flat areas that showed the same white coloration and crystals. We were warned to avoid stepping on these areas because they were formed when a vent under the ground heated water in the soil, creating gas that was causing the bubble and the crystals. The mounds were brittle and we were warned that if we stepped on the mounds, the ground would easily give way under our weight and we would plunge into boiling mud.

The walls of the crater were amazing. There were reds and yellows and browns and the walls were scarred as if a child had run its fingers down the walls. Here and there were areas where holes where steam and brimstone were escaping, leaving bright yellow rings around the holes. The ground over which we walked was marked by areas where water was running or had run in streams. Some of these streams were bright yellow while others were bright red or pale blue.

As we walked deeper into the crater, winding our way around mounds of rock, flowing water and open vents, we approached a vent from which steam and gas were hissing out wildly, creating billowing clouds. While we were gathered around the vent, suddenly the wind changed direction and our group was enveloped in the suffocating cloud of gas. We all put on our gas masks and our guide led us away from the vent.

Our walk towards the back of the crater was taking us closer to the active crater. To look into the crater, we would have to walk up a wall of dirt which had formed around the crater above us. The guide stopped us to tell us that if we went up to the crater, all of the safety procedures went out the window. If there were to be an eruption while we were up there, we would only have seconds before we would be engulfed in a spray of boiling acid and showered with pyroclastic bombs. It was suggested that those who came with family should say their goodbyes before proceeding.

We climbed up to the lip of the crater and down below us was a pool of very pale, opaque blue liquid shrouded in mists. The mists were so thick that we couldn’t see the other side of the crater, but we could hear the violent hissing of the vents on the other side of the crater which were producing all of the gas. The color of the liquid was beautiful, but deadly. The guide told us that the PH of the liquid was measured and that at one point the value had been negative. The guide said that he didn’t know that the PH scale could go negative, but apparently super strong acids could do so. The smell of sulfur was strong in the air and my throat was itching from the gasses.

Needless to say, the volcano didn’t erupt while we were standing on the crater and after standing on the rim for a time, we climbed back down and began to walk towards the far end of the old crater. Along the way we could see an older crater that had been partially filled in by one of the eruptions. We were told about one of the sulfur mine workers who had gone missing one day. His shoes were found near one of the craters, but there was no sign of his body. The theory was that he had committed suicide. However, the guides told us that a while ago, one of the guides had been on the island and had fallen into one of the holes in the ground. Unable to get himself out, he took of his shoes and threw out of the hole so that others would see the shoes and know where he lay. He eventually managed to get himself out of the hole, but our guides theorized that maybe that was what happened to the sulfur mine worker.

We passed more areas of brilliant reds and yellows and more of the tiny vents in the ground. These were really remarkable because you would see a brilliant ring of yellow granules scattered around a little black hole in the ground. The whole thing looked extremely delicate and was probably very dangerous. We saw many puddles of gurgling mud.

Our walk took us back to the site of the sulfur mine and we could wander past rusted gears, the remains of a tractor and the dilapidated concrete walls. We wandered down to the dock where the rocks on the shore were a dark red color that offset the bright yellow water of the ocean. We were instructed to scrub our shoes to get off any of the corrosive substances from them we were taken back to the boat in turns. We were given the chance to swim in the bay and one brave woman took them up on the offer, swimming off of an active volcano. The boat had intended to circle the island before heading back to shore, but strong winds on the other side of the island resulted in choppy water and so they turned back.

Like a lot of things in New Zealand, the trip to White Island was pricey, but definitely worth it. Never have I seen anything like the inside of the crater and it was very exciting to walk on an active volcano.


Check out this link to the webcams in several of New Zealand’s volcanoes

More about the recent lahar on Mt Ruapehu can be found here.

A lot of the information about White Island for this email was found on the Pee Jay website

Additional references about lahars and volcanic gasses:
Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado

Volcano Hazards Program (VHP) of the U.S. Geological Survey

Rotorua

If you have ever dreamed of hanging out in a city that smells like rotten eggs, then Rotorua is the place for you! Dubbed “Sulfur City”, Rotorua is one of New Zealand’s premier tourist destinations because there is evidence of vulcanism everywhere. Throughout the city, you can find pits of bubbling, steaming, smelling mud gurgling away. Graves in the churchyard have to be built above the ground because digging in the ground is likely to unearth a hot spring. The hotels all advertise geothermaly fed hot tubs and if you are lucky, there may even be a bubbling pit of mud right outside your window! There are thermal parks around the city with geysers, some of which spurt water 20m into the air, mineral baths, and bright orange or green pools.

The naturally hot water lured Maori to settle around the area. The Maori used the hottest pools for cooking and building their houses on the hot ground to provide heating during the winter. Today, there are a number of Maori villages in the area as well as a number of Maori led tours and the guide books say that it is a great place to experience Maori culture in the form of a concert or a hangi. The concerts are performances of Maori music and dancing and perhaps a bit of hongi (pressing of noses). The Rough Guides describe hangi as meals where the meat and vegetables are steamed for hours in an earth oven. First, the men light a fire and place river stones in the embers. While these are heating, a pit is dug into which the hot stones are plaed and covered with wet sacking. The women prepare the lamb, pork, chicken, fish, and vegetables and wrap them in leaves before arranging them in baskets which are lowered into the pit and covered with earth. A few hours later, the baskets are recovered revealing tender steam-smoked meat with a faintly earth flavor.

The city of Rotorua reflects its position as a tourist destination with a plethora of hotels, wide boulevards crisscrossing the downtown area, all lined with shops, restaurants, bars and more hotels. The city has been a tourist destination since the 1800’s when people came to bathe in the waters in hopes of curing all sorts of diseases and to see the Pink and White Terraces which were formed by sinter deposits of silica from volcanic activity. The terraces were proclaimed as the 8th wonder of the world, but were destroyed when Mt Tarawera erupted in 1886.

While in town, we were staying in a nice YHA affiliate which offered nice double rooms with bath. The hostel was a bit odd in that you were issued your own plates and cutlery which you kept in your room when you were not using them. The hostel was located on the edge of the city and next to Kuirau Park, a large park that was full of thermal vents. The vents were the result of thermal activity that took place in January 2001 when an eruption occurred for about 15 minutes, throwing mud and steam 200m into the air. The park was a great introduction to Rotorua and Sue reported that the vents were even better than Craters of the Moon for which there is an entrance fee. There must have always been thermal vents in Kuirau Park because we saw bath houses where one can swim in the heated water. But, now there were also pits of mud all over the place as well as large pools of steaming water. Houses back right up to the park and I saw one house with open windows just above one of the bubbling, stinking holes in the ground. I suppose that you eventually get used to the smell, but still I cant help thinking that it cant be very nice.

The area around Rotorua is packed with things to do. Today there are thermal parks all around Rotorua and incorporating the word hell or devil into the name is quite popular (Hell’s Gate, Devils Playground, etc. You get the idea). One of the largest is Whakarewarewa Thermal Reserve where you can pay to see the bubbling vents and geysers. There are the nearby lakes fishing including the Blue and Green Lakes (which are blue and green, respectfully) for sailing, white water rafting and adventure sport. There are museums and lots of parks including the Agrodome where you can see a forty-five minute long sheep show (we passed) and many opportunities to see Maori concerts and hangi. Nearby Lake Rotorua is the St Faith’s Anglican church which is intricately decorated with Maori carvings and there is an image of Christ wearing a Maori cloak etched on a window so that he appears to be walking on the nearby lake. There is also a bird park where Sue was finally able to see her Kiwis.

While Sue was checking out one of the thermal parks, I went to the nearby Whakarewarewa Forest where a century ago, exotic plants were planted to see if they could grow in New Zealand. What is surreal is that amongst the numerous walking paths, horse paths and mounting bike tracks through the forest are a good number of Redwoods which had been brought from California. The trees were found to grow three times faster than in California and are thriving today.

Unless we were eating our weight in pizza, Sue and I would cook all of our meals at the hostel at which we were staying. One night in Rotorua, we decided to cook some of the Green Lipped Mussels that are found in New Zealand. As the name implies, the shells of the mussels are black, but have a beautiful green color around the edge. We set about cooking the mussels and butter in the hostel’s kitchen. I feared that people would be upset at the smell of shellfish, but most people were really curious about the mussels and where we got them. At $4 a kg, the mussels are amazingly inexpensive and tasty.

After our first day in Rotorua, we had to sit down to figure out what to do next. When we had planned out our whole trip, we had left an empty day in the schedule because we were not sure what to do with it. We poured over the guidebooks and after much discussion and logistical planning, we decided that we would drive up to Whakatane from where we would visit White Island, an active volcanic island located about 50km offshore. We even had to wear gas masks.

Taupo, Disappearing Kayaks and Sampling Arnold’s Wine

The morning after I had hiked the Tongariro Crossing and Sue had visited Mt Ruapehu, we drove the 1/2 hour to the town of Taupo which is located on the shore of Lake Taupo. The lake is well known to volcanologists because it is actually a caldera volcano. Caldera volcanoes are different than cone volcanoes. Cone volcanoes generate many small eruptions from the same site. An example in New Zealand is Mt Ruapehu which has been erupting almost continuously for about 260,000 years. The many frequent eruptions of the volcano usually produce between 0.001 and 0.2 cubic km of lava and ash per eruption, which has created a steep-sided cone.

Caldera volcanoes such as Taupo produce larger and less frequent eruptions. Caldera volcanoes are created when magma rises through channels from hot spots in the mantle into vast reservoirs beneath the Earth’s crust. The rising magma creates pressure beneath the crust, bulging the crust upwards as the pressure increases. This chamber increases to an enormous size, until finally, the pressure becomes too great and the ground ruptures in an explosion powerful enough to hurl magma, ash and gases far into the atmosphere in volumes so large that debris can rain down for thousands of square miles. As the pressure subsides, the ground collapses into the depleted magma chamber below the crust, creating a huge depression called a caldera. Sometimes the eruptions are as large as 50 cubic km or even bigger, and form new caldera structures. Other eruptions are smaller and contained within the existing caldera like many of Taupo's eruptions over the past 20,000 years. These small eruptions are typically between 0.5 and 10 cubic km.

When I was in the US, I saw a program on the Discovery Chanel about these caldera volcanoes which the program called “super volcanoes”. Examples include Yellowstone in the US where there are a sting of calderas that stretch in a 350 mile line across parts of Idaho and Wyoming. Others are Lake Toba, Sumatra Indonesia, Long Valley, California, Valles Caldera, New Mexico, and Aira, Japan.

About 26,500 years ago, the Oruanui eruption at Taupo produced huge volumes of ash and other volcanic material that buried parts of the central North Island. Close to the vent the ash reached depths of about 100m. Roughly 800 cubic km of pumice and ash were ejected in this one event. The Oruanui eruption is thought to have formed the caldera now filled by Lake Taupo,

In 181 AD, Taupo erupted in what is described as the most violent and explosive known in the world in the past 5000 years. At the climax of this eruption, about 30 cubic km of pumice, ash and rock fragments was erupted in only a few minutes and travelled horizontally as a liquid flow, moving at speeds estimated at between 600-900 km/h. The eruption column heights reached 45-50 km (about twice the height of Vesuvius 79 AD and over a hundred times more than Mount St. Helens.). Ash was distributed over an extremely large area. New Zealand was not inhabited at the time of the eruption, but today that same area is populated by over 200,000 people. The effects of the eruption were seen in the sky as far away as Europe and China.

There have been many smaller eruptions since 181 AD. Today Lake Taupo still shows signs of life, which New Zealanders have put to good use. Ample hot springs and other hydrothermal activity enable New Zealand to generate about 8 percent of its electricity at a geothermal plant on the north side of Lake Taupo, at Wairakei.

The town of Taupo, located on the shore of Lake Taupo is thriving. I had just visited Taupo in 2004, but after only three years absence the town looked bigger with more developments in the suburbs and more stores downtown. Despite the growth, Taupo is still a nice town on the shore of the beautiful lake and ideally located for fishing, kayaking, hiking or other outdoor sports.

Sue and I spent the morning tramping along the Waikato river which at a length of 264 miles (425 km) is the longest river in New Zealand. The last time that I was here, I was impressed by the clarity of the water and its color. The water has an opaque, aquamarine color and patches of sand on the bottom appeared aquamarine as well. However, on the day that we walked, the water level of the river was quite high which reduced the visibility. Our walk took us past people sitting in the river where hot water bubbles from the ground and mixes with the cold river water. We also saw the Huka Falls where the Waikato River narrows from roughly 100 metres across into a hard rock granite canyon only 15 metres across. The volume of water flowing through often approaches 220,000 litres per second.

In the afternoon, we hired kayaks to paddle down the river. The water was flowing so swiftly that we barely needed to paddle to go at a nice pace. We were each in single person kayaks, but our guide was in a special kayak design that had been designed and built in New Zealand specifically for small streams. Our guide was telling us that they can not make the kayaks fast enough to supply the world-wide demand for the small, stable boat. Currently, production is by hand, but maybe that will change as its popularity grows. Even on our small trip the kayak was noticed by other people who wanted to know more about it.

Our conversation with our guide turned towards emigration and he mentioned that a lot of young people are keen to move from New Zealand. Although New Zealand is a beautiful country, young people are lured by higher paying jobs elsewhere. For example, a lot of engineers wind up in Australia because they can earn more money there than in New Zealand.

Our trip took us past a bungee jump where high cliffs near the river provide a great opportunity for people to jump from a platform and to pay handsomely for doing so. Although the quickly flowing water made paddling easy, it created some nice rip currents, one of which I got caught in. I was just paddling along, minding my own business when my kayak went out from under me. Fortunately, I was actually keen on taking a swim anyway and so I didn’t mind getting wet and fortunately my sunglasses stayed on my head. After I got back into my kayak, we made a stop at the hot springs for a nice sit in the water. There were a lot of people enjoying the warm water and it felt like sitting in a pub because people were all chatting with each other and just hanging out.

The next morning, we packed our bags and headed northeast. However, before we left the town, we stopped at the Wishart Estate Winery for a wine tasting. We arrived at a very good time because we were the only people in the store at that time of day. We had to wait for a few minutes while the manager finished a telephone conversation which gave us time to look about and to read a recent news article about the manager and the winery.

In December, Arnolds Schwarzenegger's personal assistant was in New Zealand to scout places for the governor to see during his upcoming visit. The assistant visited the winery and decided that the 2002 Wishart Hawke's Bay Legend would be a perfect gift for Arnold to have with his Christmas dinner. The assistant arranged to have several bottles of the wine delivered to her in Auckland so that she could fly them back with her at the end of her trip. Ms. Olsen, the manager of the winery boxed up the wine and sent to Auckland by courier. However, the day that the assistant was to fly out, she called the manager to say that the wine had not arrived. The manager called the courier and upon learning that the courier had broken all of the bottles on route, she closed the shop, put two cases of wine in her car and drove up to Auckland. She arrived just in time to meet the assistant before her flight left. Fortunately, customs let the bottles through without charging duty on the wine and the governor was able to enjoy them for Christmas. Since then, Ms Olsen has received an email inviting her to dinner with Arnold Schwarzenegger at the US ambassador's residence in Wellington later in the year. And once the story hit the newspapers, orders for Arnold’s favorite wine have skyrocketed.

The manager poured both Sue and I a glass of the first wine for us to sample and we tried the wine under the manager’s watchful eye. When we were finished, she asked us if we would like some tips on wine tasting. It was one of those humbling moments where you are being told that you are doing something wrong and you have a moment to decide if you want to admit that you have no idea about what you are doing even if you thought that you did. We decided to ask for help and I am very glad that we did because we learned a lot. First of all, the wines that we were sampling included reserves which are rarely given at tastings and so we were working with some very nice wines which is probably why the manager was keen on us drinking them properly. Some of the things that we learned included (I hope that I remember these correctly before putting them on the blog!):

* Swirl the wine in the wine glass. If after the wine has settled to the bottom of the glass, you see a syrupy liquid clinging to the sides of the glass. The more liquid clinging to the sides of the glass, the higher the alcohol content of the wine.
* When sampling red wines, hold the glass up to the light and tilt the glass a little. If you see an orange ring around the wine in the glass, it indicates that the wine had been oxidized from standing open for too long. If this happens to a glass that you have received in a restaurant or a bar, it is best to send it back and to ask for a glass from a freshly opened bottle. The manager told us that the restaurant will probably know that the bottle has been open for too long and will replace your glass.
* Smelling the wine is very important to tasting the wine. We were told to put our nose into the glass and to take a deep breath to fully appreciate the flavors of the wine. The manager then quizzed us as to the flavors we smelled in each wine. It is amazing that you can smell the complex flavors in some of the wines including things that you would not think of such as cut grass (especially in Marlborough Region Sauvignon Blanc), oaks, berries and a host of other flavors.

My favorites from the wines that we tasted were the Lonely Mountain Pinot Noir 2005 at $35 a bottle and the Te Puriri Melot Rose at $17.50 a bottle. Arnold’s favorite ran at $33 a bottle.

After our winery tour, we continued on a bit to see the Craters of the Moon thermal area in Wairakei Tourist Park. The park includes steaming ground, mud pools and explosion craters which suddenly sprang up in the 1950's when the nearby power station lowered underground water levels causing the water in the underground reservoirs to boil more violently, producing more steam which escaped in the park. We also stopped by the Wairakei Field where steam and hot water are extracted from the ground to produce electricity. The field is massive and is littered by large, silver and white pipes that run this way and that as the water and steam is collected and sent to the power plant which is located miles away. The scheme was the first geothermal plant in the world to use very hot water as the source of steam used to drive the turbines. With an annual production of 1550 GWH, the plant produces 4.3% of New Zealand’s electricity. However, there have been complaints that tapping the hot water and diverting it to the plant has decreased the thermal activity in the area.

One other stop of interest that we made during our drive was at the Honey Hive which claims that “If the bees make it, we've got it!” The store had every product derived from honey that you can think of including liquors, cosmetics and treats such honey ice-cream. All of the products could be sampled including the honey wines. There was an indoor hive where you could watch the bees at work and a lot of really good educational information about bees.

Finally, we arrived in the city of Rotorua where we would be spending the next few days.



There were lots of references used for this post. Included are:

The Discover Chanel Program
New Zealand Minerals Industry Association
GNS Science

Tongariro Crossing

The clouds were hanging low in the sky on the morning of the 22nd of January when I had planned to hike the Tongariro Crossing. I woke up at 5AM and got myself and my gear ready so that I could meet the bus at 6:20. I packed my SLR in my Camelback hydration pack (compliments of friends at B&D) as well as my Gore-Tex jacket and my leather hiking boots. I wanted to travel light, but decided it was better to be prepared for any weather rather than to be caught unprepared in a rain storm or to be cold on the mountain. I walked to the appointed meeting place and at 6:20 I got onto the bus that arrived. After paying, I realized that I was not on the bus that I had booked with, but instead on a clever competitor’s bus which was making the rounds at the same time. I wasn’t the only one to make this mistake, but as long as it got me to the trailhead early and picked me up at the end of the day, it really didn’t matter. Actually, the bus that I boarded worked out better because it wasn’t at all crowded and it arrived and departed at better times than the original bus that I had booked.

After finally leaving the town, the bus made the long drive to the start of the trail through the dense fog which covered the land. As we drove, the driver explained to us that we could not drink the water on the mountain because it would make us sick and he offered to stop at a store if anyone needed to buy water. He explained that we had several options for pickup times at the end of the trail and that we shouldn’t worry about the dense fog because it would clear soon. We arrived at the trailhead around 7:15 and I was disappointed to see a half dozen busses and lots of people already there. So much for going early to beat the crowds.

After a quick stop, I walked through the crowds of people milling about the trailhead and got onto the trail. After seeing how many people were about, my initial plan was to hike quickly to pass the slower walkers so that I could walk by myself which is more appealing to me than spending the day in a crowd of hikers. I remember when I was a young Boy scout, I went on a trip to hike up a mountain in New Hampshire. During the hike, my friends and I urgently tried to walk fast to stay ahead of another troop much to the aggravation of our leader and it didn’t work out. Nor did it on the Crossing. Everyone had arrived at different times so that there was no way that I was passing everyone since so many people were ahead of me. So I settled down to my normal walking pace and enjoyed the walk. I wound up always being around the same people who would pass me when I stopped to take a photo and vice versa.

The first hour of the tramp was spent hiking through the dense fog along a sand and stone trail through fields of randomly shaped volcanic rock. I didn’t mind the fog as much during this part of the hike because it made the whole experience surreal. Walking past lava flows and sharp rock formations of random shapes, made the early morning landscape seem like a dream world. The gurgle of water to the left betrayed the existence of a small creak but otherwise the stillness of it all was only punctuated by footfalls on the gravel path. Off to the sides, I could catch glimpses of hills and rock formations which faded in and out of the fog, but nothing more was to be seen. The only vegetation that I could see was moss and the occasional tussock. It was very easy to see why Peter Jackson chose this park to be the set for Mordor in the Lord of the Rings movies.

The track wound its way through the rock formations until eventually coming to a bowl shaped area with tall walls of rocks that I could glimpse through the mists. The trail began a rapid ascent up one of the walls, climbing from 1400m up to 1600m on a section of the trail called the devil’s staircase. Loose, volcanic rocks were underfoot and I gained height quickly with every step. The sharp, loose rocks that were dislodged with every step bit into my boots (but not my feet), scratching the leather making me glad that I had real hiking boots rather than low boots or sneakers. At one point, I looked back over the plain and was lucky enough to catch an opening in the clouds which revealed the valley through which I had hiked for a few seconds. But then the clouds came rushing back in and everything was white once more.

I arrived at the top of the ladder to find a lot of people sitting in a flat area to take a breather after the climb. The fog was still limiting visibility to about 20 feet, but it was clear enough to read a sign warning that recent seismic activity had made it unsafe to climb to the crater of Mt Ngauruhoe due to the release of poisonous gasses. Because of the fog, I never even realized that it was here that a side track departed from the main track if you wanted to climb to the crater. However, our driver had advised against climbing to the summit due to the poor visibility in the mist. I would later learn that a whole group of school children had tried to make the climb, but they became disoriented in the fog and the trail was not well marked. Fortunately, they were only lost for a few hours.

I took advantage of the fact that most people stopped for a break to press on alone to the next part of the track. I walked across a wide, flat expanse of sand. For all that I knew, the expanse of sand could have gone on forever because all that I could see around me was mist with darkness beyond. The mists swirled around my feet as it raced over the sand, propelled by the wind. The racing mists gave the impression of speed even though I was walking slowly and the still dampness of the air swallowed the smallest sound. The trail was marked by poles stuck into the ground and as I passed by one, I could see another at the edge of the mists which was the only indication that I was going the right way and not wandering aimlessly through this dream world.

I arrived at another steep climb up a rock wall just as a gap in the clouds behind me raced across the plain that I had just crossed, revealing the sand and other trampers before the sun disappeared again. I climbed the hill and once I got to the top, I walked to what had to be the edge of a cliff, beyond which there was nothing. I stopped here to change socks because the thick rag socks that I had on were too stretched out and were threatening to give me blisters as they bunched around my feet. Fortunately (or stupidly depending on the viewpoint) I knew that this would happen and had brought another pair of socks. However, it turned out to be a very serendipitous thing that I had to make this stop because as I stood on the precipice, the clouds opened up revealing bright, blue skies and the cone of Mt Ngauruhoe which stood out above the clouds. It was startlingly quick transformation from bleakness to beauty. Also revealed, was the very deep Red Crater below where I was standing. Yipes. I quickly took out my camera and shot away, fearing that the clear skies would disappear. However, my fears never came true because once broken, the clouds cleared entirely leaving the sky clear and blue for the rest of the tramp. Everything was timed perfectly because I would have been very disappointed if I had not been able to see the surrounding mountains from this vantage point.

The trail continued upwards and skirted along the top of a narrow hill of rock. It was around here that a side track led to the Tongairo summit, but I never saw the side track. The winds up there were ferocious and I had to hold onto my bag to keep the jacket that I had stashed in one of the pockets from being torn out and blown down the mountain. Once I got to the top of the hill, I could look down upon the flat valley floor of the Central Crater below. To the left I could clearly see old lava flows which were like platforms of continuous, black rock that stood out in contrast to the sandy floor of the valley. To the right were the Emerald Lakes which were round pools of brilliant colors in the black rocks. On the rock wall on the other side of the valley I could see the large, Blue Lake beyond which the landscape descended again, giving the impression that the lake was floating at the top of the mountain. The view was fantastic with the blue and green waters contrasting with the black rocks and the blue skies and mountains in the distance.

The track descended down a steep hill of loose scoria which people were hesitant to walk on because you sank into the small rocks slid downwards with every footstep. But, thanks to my high boots, the rocks never got into my boots because the tops of my boots never sank below the rocks. I could take long strides and sort of float lazily walk down the hill with my camera in one hand.

I walked over to the very alluring Emerald lakes which were each about 30 feet in diameter. The air smelled of sulfur thanks to the vents nearby. The blue, green and yellow color of the lakes is caused by minerals which have leached out of the surrounding rocks. Despite the hues, the water was very clear so that you could easily see to the bottom. One pool had a yellow ring by the shore because the sediment was a yellow color, but then gave way to blue at the middle of the pool.

From the lakes, the track continued across the sandy floor of the crater towards the other side of the bowl of rocks that ringed the crater, about a mile distant. The sand of the floor was littered with rocks and other than the well worn trail, the area looked as it had never been disturbed. To my left was the black rock of the lava flows that had oozed out of the Red Crater and had been frozen in time when the lava cooled. I climbed up the side of the crater and could look back at the volcanic cones and the range of snow covered mountains behind me. The trail continued on past Blue Lack and entered into a valley through which I could see the surrounding country side and lakes below me. The clouds that were crossing the countryside were below the mountains on which I stood, giving an indication of the height of where I was standing.

From this point, the track began a descent down the side of the mountain, leaving the volcanic world behind. There was a series of long switchbacks that gently arced back and forth across the fields of tussocks on the side of the mountain. The day was getting warmer and I had to take off the last of my warm gear and apply sunscreen to my bare arms and legs because there were no trees at all to offer protection from the sun in a land with no ozone layer above it. Eventually I arrived at a hut with bathrooms where people could rest and get filtered water. From there, the track continued to descend and I could see white steam rising from bare patches of rocks and canyons that looked like rough gashes in the hills. These were areas where thermal vents had broken through the ground, killing the vegetations and looking like lesions on the sides of the tussock covered hills. The track entered into an area of hot springs and flowing creeks of water. The water in the creeks stained the rocks over which it flowed bright orange and red. Signs warned that the track was crossing private property that belonged to a thermal spa and urged trampers to resist walking off the trail in search of springs in which to relax.

The track continued to descend along the very warm side of the hill. There were some points where the track was below the ground level which prevented the cooling wind from alleviating the heat. Fortunately, there were few of these. Finally, the track descended into the cover of the forest for the last leg of the walk. I walked past roaring streams and waterfalls for the last hour before arriving at a shelter at the end of the track.

The tramp took me about 6 1/4 hours and it had been about 3 3/4 hours since I had arrived at the top of the track. Others took less time. I had about an hour to wait for my bus which was disappointing because had hoped to make the side trips up the volcanoes rather than sitting, but those trips will have to wait till the next time that I can make the tramp. I cant wait to walk it again, especially during the winter when the track is less populated and the snow will be covering everything.

Maps and more information on the Tongariro Crossing