Can you say Whakatane?
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…
Tags: New Zealand
lauracat
I remember mispronouncing it when we first came here, until some chortling Kiwis put me right. My kids love saying Whakatane and Whakapapa, because it sounds rude!