Well, I had extreame high hopes for this weekend, as I was going to go walking around a LIVE volcano, White Island... as long as the weather co-operated any ways. Well, the weather turned out fine, but the volcano ended up being more than a little dissapointing. Oh well.

The weekend started out really good with a first stop in the Karangahake Gorge. I thought this would be just a quick hour walk around, but it ended up to be a very interesting spot. It's obviously a river gorge, but the cool thing is it was the site of an old gold mine in the late 1800's. You can still see the remnants of the mines, the mining plants, and the mining town.

There are tons of different cool paths throughout the old mining buildings. Along the tracks you can see relics of the many processes that took place to extract the gold - from the tunnels where rock was extracted, to the roasting pits where the rock was broken down, and finally remnants of the huge stamper battery processing plant. The Talisman battery, built in the 1890s was huge in its day, with 50 stampers crushing rock around the clock.

Even though it's only been about 80 years since the plants were abandoned, with the rate that vegetation grows in New Zealand, it almost seems as though you are looking at ancient ruins. Very cool.

So all of this was actually at the end of my hike, because first I took the hiking path that went up to the top of the gorge so you could get a panarama view of the valley and gorge. There was a couple of good view spots, but for the most part it was pretty enclosed in trees. Luckily it was not a difficult hike, not very steep, and I was very grateful for that because I was still feeling a little of the effects of the Pinnacles hike last weekend.

The best part of the hike was that they have turned a bunch of the old mining tunnels into part of the hiking paths. It took me off guard when I came to the first tunnel. I was hiking along, and all of a sudden I came to this spot where the path lead straight into a very long tunnel. It was probably about 2-3 blocks long. I was surprised, because even though I could see a very distant circle of light at the very distant end, it didn't seem like a good thing to be hiking through without a light. So, I looked around and there was only the river on one side and the mountain side on the other. No where to go but through the tunnel. OK, in I go. I could not see anything, so I had to hold my hand up in front of me to make sure I would not hit my head. Then I just felt out each step as the bottom was not completely level, but full of rocks and boulders you had to step through. It took forever to walk those few blocks, but very cool once I was out. I'm not sure if this was an old mining tunnel, or part of the path system that New Zealand created to get through this part of the path, or when or why this particular tunnel was made, but it was pretty cool to be part of the hiking path.

So much later in the hike I got to the old Karangahake mining area. Here they have turned some of the old minng tunnels into a pathway. There are some that are carved right into the walls of the gorge, which is very cool. One of the pathways is called the Windows Walk, and basically takes you through old mine tunnels with occational "window" outlets to the cliff edge. It was very cool.

At first I was not sure if I would be able to walk through it though because unlike the other tunnel where there was at least a pinprick of light of the other end, these got completely pitch dark between windows. I guess you are supposed to take a flashlight... oh well how could I have known. But luckily just as I was going in I met these two old guys coming out. They were like "OH, you don't have a torch?" (flashlight). I was like "No, do I really need one?". And they told me that the ground was pretty flat and I could probably just feel my way between the pockets of light. So, I was like cool and set in. I'm glad I met them though because it did get litterlly PITCH black and if they had not assured me it would be alright I probably would have turned back 1/2 way. At some point I figured out that I could use the "focus" red light from my camera which send out a red beam of light forward to focus. This enabled me to at least see which way the cave turned, which was some help. Otherwise I just kind of made my way slowly though the real dark parts, and finally came out on the other end.

After this I was at the old mining buildings, which were cool to explore for a while. Overall it was a real cool place to explore. So a short stop ended up being a very cool 3 hour hike.

Then it was back on the road and off to Tauranaga / Mt. Maunganui. These are kind of twin cities on the eastern part of the Bay of Pleanty. Tauranaga is the bigger city and where I was staying for the night and Mt. Maunganui is the "beach town" area of Tauranaga. So first it was off to visit Mt. Maunganui, which is famous for it's beaches, which were surprisingly popular for a sunny winter day. But I skipped those for the mountain (extinct volcano of course) that the town was named for. This mountain was interesting because it's a very cone-shaped mountain that seems to just rise up out of nowhere right next to the white sand beaches.

It was an unuasually sunny and warm day so there was a ton of people out enjoying the weather and the paths were very busy. I starting hiking all the way around the base of the volcano (45 min), and then headed up to the top. Oh, and on the bottom path I also saw a very large wild seal, only about 5 meters away sunning itself on the rocks. Very cool.

After the short, but steep hike to the top, including a few parts that were a little too straight down for my "heights meter", I was rewarded with a panaramic view of the Bay of Pleanty, Mt. Maunganui, and a bit of Tauranga.

So, by the time I got back down, drove to Taurnaga, checked into my hostel, and got out to see Tauranga it was pretty much dark. So all I saw of Tauranaga was at dusk that night. Also in the pub where I had dinner I once again got exposed to the New Zealand OBSESSION with rugby. There was a big game on that night and it seemed like the entire town was showing up to watch it. It was interesting, but pretty insane in my opinion. I guess if you have nothing else to do on a Saturday night... which I guess at this point I didn't have that much to do either. Oh well. I stayed for a bit, but just cannot get into rugby. And I was exhausted and knew I had to get up early the next day, so it was early to bed.

The next day I was up before dawn and able to see a little more of Tauranga as the sun rose. Took a ton of pictures of the sun rising over the Tauranga harbour. A couple turned out good.

After the sunrise it was off for an hour drive to Whakatane, where the boat for the tour of White Island would leave from.

I met up with a couple of people from my work in Whakatane. Both Jowe and Sherie, I had gone canyoning with a couple of weeks before in Piha Canyon, and Jowe brought along another friend. So the boat trip takes about an hour and a half to get out to White Island. I was surprised that it was an old fashioned "regular" boat, and not a catamaran. After dropping anchor in what is called Crater Bay, we were given out hard hats and gas masks, and were then transported by a inflatable dingy to White Island.

White Island is a live volcano with vents and craters ejecting steam and mud constantly. What I did not realize until after the trip was that we would not see any actual lava errupting. Damn! I was very dissapointed by this, as I expected to be able to see the inside and bubbling or even errupting lava and stuff. Alas it was much more tame than this. I guess the unusual part come from the fact that you are actually able to walk right inside the main crater of the volcano. But in terms of seeing much interesting while there, there is not all that much. Even the crater lake in the middle, a hot boiling lake of water heated by the thermal activity below is not very interesting because all you can see is tons of steam rising from the ground. You cannot get close enough to the edge to see anything because it's too unstable. So basically all of the crater you see is a bunch of rising steam... oh how exciting. Oh well.

I was constantly hoping that something exciting would happen, like an eruption or landslide or water break, all these things that guide said happen ever now and then, nothing extreamly dangerous of course... but of course nothing did happen. Oh well, can't always be all exciting I guess.

The tour did included some interesting information from the guide about how twice they tried to setup sulphur mining on the island and both times where wipped out by the volcano. So after the tour of the island, it was back on the boat for lunch and got back to Whakatane at about 3:30pm. Then because it was so late, it was just drive back to Auckland after that. All in all an OK weekend, but was very dissapointed with the "live" volcano. Oh well.