Before leaving the Coromandel Peninsula we visited Hot Water Beach and Cathedral Cove.
Basically some volcanos have underground reservoirs of superheated water which escapes to the surface through fissures. There are two such fissures at Hot Water Beach issuing water as hot as 64 degrees Celsius at a rate of 15 litres per minute. You have to dig a hole which then fills with hot to warm water. Mind you if you are not lucky your hole fills with cold or very, very hot water and you have to move onto another spot and start again. Peter took the lazy option and took over a hole already dug and vacated by bathers. The campsite hired out little spades to enable you to dig your own hot water spa. Fissures on beaches are not common so you can imagine how popular the beach was.

The other site, Cathedral Cove has a naturally formed arch which was quite photogenic.

On leaving the Peninsula we drove through impressive conifer forests with some areas of extensive logging, which was sad. After the forests we drove along the east coast through Avocado and Kiwi (the fruit) growing regions to Whakatane from where you can get a boat trip to White Island. We had to wait a day as the weather was bad so we had a nose around the town and ended up going to the pictures- a very quaint cinema. We were the only ones watching a funny New Zealand film. The next morning we got the go ahead from the skipper so of we set to White Island.

White Island, named by Captain Cook (who happened to see it in 1769 as he was passing) is New Zealand's only marine volcano and its most continuously active volcano during the last 40 years. It’s estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000 years old. In its crater is a steaming lake surrounded by sulphur beds with hissing and bubbling fumaroles. It was impressive if a little smelly. Long before the Europeans took any interest in the Island Maori collected sulphur as manure. Europeans landed on the Island in 1826 but didn’t start serious exploitation of sulphur until 1885. In 1914 there was a volcanic explosion which destroyed the mine and killed 10 miners. On the plus side it did leave a huge gap in the crater wall making access for tourists a lot easier.

On and off, sulphur extraction was carried out until 1933. After this they abandoned the operation leaving the factory and machinery. The acidic atmosphere has had a good go at this and has left little evidence of all the mining operations. In 1936 the Buttle family purchased the island; it must have sounded quite cool to say you own a volcano as in 1952 when the NZ government wanted to buy the island the family refused. They did however agree to the Island being declared a private scenic reserve.

The sea was very calm the day of our trip so I managed to get there and back without being sick -quite an achievement for me. Before we stepped onto the island we were issued with hardhats and masks. As fashion accessories they were not the best but the smell of sulphur was so pungent, even burning your throat, that the mask was welcomed. I am not too sure what use the hardhats would have been as the volcano kicks out some pretty large rocks.

During our visit to the Island there was a bit of excitement – not of the volcanic type - but a marriage proposal- between two girlies. She did accept. It was quite sweet.

Next day we drove inland to Rotorua, a massive geothermal system in the centre of the island. This is the point I give you a bit of a geology lesson. NZ sits on two tectonic plates - the Pacific and the Australian. The North Island and some parts of the South Island sit on the Australian Plate, while the rest of the South Island sits on the Pacific. These two plates are shifting and grinding into each other and sinking under each other. As though that isn’t complicated enough the two plates are moving in different directions. The Australian plate is heading north whilst the Pacific plate is heading west. Overall this means Christchurch is moving away from Auckland at a rate of 4 metres every 100 years.

All rather confusing; but what it does mean is that NZ gets a lot of geological action and, in the case of Rotorua, a lot of geothermal activity as a result of the earth being a little on the warm side. This is because the crust is at its thinnest at this point so the magma is not far below the surface. Almost all of these geothermal systems are hydrothermal, which means ground water from the surrounding area is heated by the magma and rises to the surface to produce a variety of features including geysers, mud pools, hot springs and steaming ground. Hope that wasn’t too bad for you!

We visited several geothermal sites in the Rotorua area the first being Hells Gate named - believe it or not – by George Bernard Shaw who visited back in 1934. He likened the area to comments made by his theologian colleagues back in England. They were explaining to him that being a practising atheist would result in his "going to hell". What he saw at Roturua moved him to believe that this would be the gateway to hell. It is the most active area in Rotorua. Its heat source is less than 2km below ground and it has the largest hot waterfall in the southern hemisphere.

On arriving in town we went and checked it out (after drying of- yes it’s a bit rainy at the moment) and Peter found a couple of pubs that might be worth a visit- that’s planned for tomorrow night. As per usual there was an Irish pub - why are they everywhere you go? Peter ended the day relaxing in the campsites hot water bath (posh campsite). I think he might have got a bit too comfortable as a picture I took looked like his head was resting in the cleavage of the rather well-endowed lady relaxing behind him. He denied it of course.



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