Volcano hopping on the North Island

With around 47 islands and a similar number of volcanoes in Auckland I mistakenly thought it might be the volcanic centre of New Zealand. It's not. The country straddles two separate tectonic plates making the whole country, literally, a hot-bed of volcanic and geothermal activity.

The last volcanic eruption in Auckland was around 600 years ago forming Rangitoto island as a result. Small and uninhabited it is only a short ferry ride from the city centre, but once there it feels like a different world; black basalt lava fields, like over-sized sun-scorched clay sods contrast sharply with the pale green lichen and lush green ferns. The one-hour hike to the summit took us about 2 hours thanks to the Wilsons Track detour through a 'Lord of the Rings' forest but the view from the top was worth it.

Back in the city, the view from the rim of huge grass-covered crater of Mount Eden is magnificent. We could see the summit of Rangitoto and dozens of other extinct volcanoes, it felt like I could almost reach out and touch them. 

A few hours down the road, Rotarua is, in every sense, built on the hot springs, geysers and mud pools that result from the magma spike just beneath the surface.

Hell's Gate geothermal park looked like the surface of the moon, except the craters were filled with steaming, bubbling water and slurping, glooping mud. Of course, I had to leave my mark there, and ended up with a sulpher stained jewellery.

Wiaotapu was an artists palette of colours; acid green lakes, pink champagne pools, bright orange mineral coral, gun metal grey terraces of slowly depositing silica and hoards of tourists.

Further south near Taupo, in the near-deserted Craters of the Moon, we stood on the rims of craters that erupted as recently as 2002. It was as if we had stepped back to the beginning of time with nothing but smoking fumaroles, sulphuric steam and low green foliage stretched out as far as the eye could see.

While the sights were different in each of the areas, the smells and sounds were common. While the pungent and sometimes choking aroma of sulphur lingered everywhere, every so often we caught a sweet lungful of maunka.

The soundtrack to all this activity was a delight. Hissing of steam, trickling and spitting of water, glooping of mud. Some of the very small craters sounded like espresso makers at full stream, while the bigger ones could've passed for large pots of boiling potatoes and the slapping and thudding of the mud pools brought to mind cauldrons of soup or, ironically enough, giant washing machines.

Interestingly, Health and Safety doesn't seem to overly worry a lot of places of interest. The hike up Rangitoto was very steep and the terrain quite challenging in places and if you fell or became injured on some of the more remote paths you were on your own.

While the paths around Hells Gate and the Craters of the Moon were clearly marked and signs warned you to stay on them, there were very few barriers in place to stop people wandering off looking for trouble. I love that people are expected to use their common sense to stay safe here and I love the Kiwi sense of humour about it all too.

It wasn't all fire and brimstone however, we did take some time out to cool off at some beautiful waterfalls too.