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White Island, New Zealand

Friday - February 29, 2008 - At Sea to White Island Volcano

Leap Year and I didn’t even think of it, oh well!

Today we will be at sea most of the day and passing the Volcanic White Island. This is an active volcano just off the end of the North island of New Zealand. It was called “Te Puiao Whakaari “, meaning The Dramatic Volcano.

It was named the White Island by Captain Cook on Oct 1, 1769. As the New Zealand story goes, a medicine man named Ngatoro was climbing up Tongario with a woman named Auruhoe. He told his followers not to eat while he was gone in order to give him strength on top of the cold mountain. When Ngatoro didn’t return for some time, his followers thought him to be dead, and they broke their fast. Ngatoro and Auruhoe immediately began to feel the cold and Nhatoro prayed to his sisters in the far away land of Hawaiki. The sisters called upon fire demons that began swimming underwater toward Ngatoro. They first came out of the water at White Island to see where they were and the land burst into flames that are still burning. The demons continued on underwater until they reached Nhatoro and burst through the summit of the mountain, thus creating the volcano Ngauruhoe. Nhatoro was saved by the warmth, but Auruhoe had already died. Ngatoro then took Auruhoe’s body and threw it into the volcano. The underwater path of the fire demons can still be seen, for everywhere they surfaced is now a thermal area (Vitaliano, 1973)

It was a nice day at sea and we enjoy sleeping in and just resting in the sunshine and getting ready to go explore Tauranga tomorrow. Tonight is also the last formal night so that should be fun as well. I don’t know if we will go to the show or not, will decide that later. We sailed past White Island about 5 in the late afternoon with a very clear view of the volcano. We had made arrangements to meet up with Tom and Connie for drinks in their cabin and then go on to dinner.

After dinner we will go up to (I can’t remember the name of the bar) located on deck 8 for our champagne celebration with the entire group.

After the champagne, we changed back into more sporty attire and headed for our favorite bar, the Navigator Lounge. We wanted to say good by to our bar tender and the servers just in case we didn't see them again on the cruise.

After that we headed for the Grand Buffet. We wanted to at least se the displays so that Monty could see all of the specially prepared foods. As it turned out we decided to stay and sample a small amount of the food which was very good and then headed off for one more drink and bed.

All and all it was a very nice day.