well i’m on my way…

I arrived in Auckland with two main things to do:  pick up some last minute souvenirs and meet up with my friend Simon, whom Naomi and I met in Invercargill.  He was on a whirlwind tour of the south island and had to go back to work in Auckland.  We had a blast together when we met, so I was determined to hang out with him one last time before I left New Zealand.  After two days of comparing prices and haggling shop owners, I completed my souvenir shopping.  My last day in Auckland I met Simon for coffee before I had to pack my bag.

I was so sad to leave New Zealand, but glad to leave Auckland.  I landed in Melbourne not too thrilled, as I spent almost two weeks there a few months ago, but I was staying with a friend I had met in Sydney when I first started traveling.  Tyler met me at the bus stop, which was only half a block away from his building.  After we went through the security doors and said hello to the concierge, I was impressed.  The marble floors and a promise of tennis courts and a swimming pool were way above my hostel standards.

The flat was on the 27 floor and had quite a view.  We got ready to go out and had a dinner of pizza that made me glad I was going home to Chicago soon to eat REAL pizza.  We met up with more friends on the infamous Brunswick Street at the even more infamous Little Creatures, originally from West Australia.  We ran into some people I knew from Sydney and even more people I didn’t know.  We did a bit of bar hopping and stayed out until the bars closed.  I hadn’t stayed out that late in a long time; in fact, I hadn’t drank since St Patrick’s Day!

The next day I wandered around Melbourne, or more truthfully, got lost.  I found the library and sat down to read my book.  Instead, I fell asleep!  I made it back to the flat as it was getting dark out and had an early dinner of noodles and went to bed early.  We were all hurting a bit, I think.

Monday I went to the Melbourne Museum while Tyler and his flatmates had to work.   I got really engrossed in the exhibits and ended up getting kicked out when the museum closed!

All day I kept on having contradictory emotions.  I’d feel like a kid on Christmas Eve, just wanting to go to bed so Christmas moring would come sooner; or in my case, the day to go home.  But once that word “home” ran through my head, a wave of panic would overcome me.  I don’t want to go home!  I don’t want to leave Australia!  The only thing that made it OK, I think, is the fact that I’m home for four days, then off to Greece and a two month Euro-trip.

When I arrived at the flat, Tyler gave me two options:  go to an AFL (Australian Football League) game or go out for a friend’s birthday.  I asked “Why can’t we do both?”  The footy game was crazy, with unprotected men running around after a rugby-shaped ball, kicking it, hitting it like a volleyball, and underhand throwing it.  Any kind of defense seemed to be allowed-shoving, kicking, tackling…everthing but face-punching.  After the third quarter, the team we were rooting for was losing by 4 times their score, we left.  Tyler and I collected some of his roommates and headed for the city center to meet up with the birthday girl and have some drinks.  We only stayed out for one and ended up having a semi early night.

I woke up the next morning and looked out the window, sad that I was leaving.  I said goodbye to my new friends and headed for the bus stop.  I don’t think I’ve ever walked so slow in my life.  As I stared out the window on the way to the airport, I vowed myself I’d be back to Australia and New Zealand, very very soon.

It’s pronounced “fa-ka-ta-knee”.  The “Wh” in Maori is prounounced “F”.  It took a bit getting used to when I first got here, but now I wonder how I will say some words when I get home…  The town got its name from a Maori legend.  The Maori came up on the land on their waka (war canoe) and the men got out and went to shore.  They left the women in the wakas to wait, as women weren’t allowed to touch the oars.  The sea acted up and started taking the wakas out to sea.  One of the women stood up, yelled to the gods some words, including the word”whakatane”, which meant “Let me act as a man!”  So that’s where the name comes from.  There’s even a statue at the Whakatane river mouth of this woman, looking all defiant and heroic. 

The town today is basically the jumping off point for White Island, New Zealand’s most active volcano, and the East Cape, which is “Maori Country”.  The White Island tour, which I was there for, is very dependant on the weather, for reasons I didn’t understand until I finally made it out there.  I waited three days before I could actually go, but the three days were definately worth it.  For the few days I was waiting, I did some of the day walks around town and hung out by the shore, watching the locals fish.

White Island loomed up out of the sea as we boated towards it and just looked like another island until we got near enough to anchor.  The ocean water all around the island for a couple meters out was a milky colour, from mixing with the sulfur that natually comes out of the volcano.  Since they’re trying really hard to maintain the naturalness of the island, we had to board a little inflatable motorized raft to get onto the island.  We filled up the raft eight at a time, floated a bit at the mercy of the waves, then just at the right time the driver would slam the raft into the “dock” and we had to scramble up one of five ladders coming out of the sea onto somewhat dry land.  The land wasn’t entirely dry because were were on a natural jetty made of rocks which was still vulnerable to the massive waves.  We got on higher, drier land and waited for the next few raftloads to being our tour of the island.

The part of the volcano that we get to tour is only the tip of it, actually it’s the crater.  The rest of it is under the ocean, who knows how many kilometers (and/or miles) deep.  I always thought that the crater of a volcano is a hole reaching to the center of the earth (well not that far), but actually it’s solid ground that’s a bit porous.  It can crumble at any time if there’s enough weight on top of it, or it’s hot enough below it.  Kind of scary, eh?    

There used to be a mining company on White Island, but once the company went backrupt, they stopped.  But they left the buildings and holding tanks still there, to weather the wind and water and whatever else might come from the volcano.  We walked around what’s left of the main building and then headed toward the center of the island.  The rock surrounding us like a protective shield from the wind was multicoloured-a tannish brown colour, a reddish hue, and bright yellow.  The yellow is obviously from the sulfur, but I’m not sure what the red is from. 

The center of the island is scattered with holes of various sizes, most of them emitting a smokey steam that was very warm when you walked into it.  It also had that wonderful sulfuric smell that resembles the scent of rotten eggs.  Some of the holes were no bigger than golf balls, but the largest was a lake that actually had sulfuric water in it!  The lake’s temperature gets up to hundreds of degrees Celcius, but was only in the fifities the day I was there.  It was bubbling at some parts and the entire thing was letting off quite a steam.  The more we stood and looked at it, we realized that something was falling into the lake!  The wall around it was collapsing!  Our guides told us that the landscape changes all the time, as we had just witnessed.  When they have a week or so off and they come back, things could drastically change in that short amount of time.  Crazy!

Getting back onto the boat was just as hairy getting off it, if not more.  The waves were acting up stronger than before, and people were getting soaked en route to the raft.  I somehow managed to stay mostly dry, but I got soaked once the big boat started moving, as I was sitting outside and the waves and the wake were not working together in my favour!

We made it back to Whakatane shortly before the sun was about to set, and I headed back to the hostel to get ready for my next destination:  Auckland, which I wasn’t excited about, at it signifies that my New Zealand trip is about to end…

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