Chop- chop- chop- chop- chop- chop- chop- chop- chop!  Our Helicopter lifted off and we were headed to White Island, home of a volcano that acted up every 10-15 years.  The last incident was in 2000.  We were in the zone. When we landed our pilot gave us each helmets and gas masks!  Then we headed out to the pool of arsenic, acid and sulfur, which was as hot as the hottest temperature you can get out of your kitchen faucet.  Our pilot told us all about the island and volcanic activity.  Gas vents exerted noxious, sulfur scented gas in to the air, and scattered about were a few sulfur crystals.  Then we turned a corner and saw a massive chunk of yellow land.  More sulfur.  All of these factors bequeathed a horrible odor on the Island. Our pilot pointed out a small series of craters.  Each crater was about 3 feet across and full of bubbling, boiling liquid.  It was so hot in those craters, that the substance was actually liquefied graphite, the same material as a pencil tip.

In addition to the major gas vents, there were hundreds of smaller ones scattered about the volcano.  I couldn’t believe it.  When I was in Natick, I thought volcanoes were tall sloped columns that spewed ash and magma; it turns out that there are many different types of volcanoes, White Island a foremost example. We walked along jumping over streams of hot-tub temperature water, and made our way to the pool of nastiness.  The water was greenish yellow, and to prove that that was not a reflection, but the actual color of the water, our pilot threw a stone in to the pool.  The water which splashed up was green.   The Troughton’s pilot and ours took our cameras and we posed for a group photo. Suddenly a colossal cloud of gas washed over us, and we all whipped up our gas masks and turned our backs against the gas, coughing all the way. On our way back to the helicopters we saw the ruins of a refinery. It was rusted and crumbled. Some of the last people to mine this place were killed in the night by a massive debris, water from the pool, and mud slide. Our pilot pointed out the cable that they used to lower themselves in to the crater. As we walked, our Pilot told us about herself. It turned out that she had also traveled all over the world, (which in retrospect makes sense; she is a pilot after all. However she had been traveling with friends and not in helicopters, so I suppose being a pilot is irrelevant.). When we told her about Piggy, she replied that she had done the same thing only a bit different. She and some friends had stolen their neighbor’s garden gnome and brought it all over the city, taking pictures as they went. In a bar on a bridge, in a park, beside a pool, on a bus, you name it this gnome has been there. We stopped for a bit at the Island’s beach. The deep, rich blue of the water was shocking after spending three hours looking at green, yellow, and rusty red rock. As we explored the beach, Giles noticed that the deeper you put your fingers in the sand the hotter it became. In fact, earlier on our trip, Colin had unearthed a stone and the underside had burned his fingers! A difference of a few centimeters was all it took to go from warm to burning. That is how close the magma and super-heated gas was to the surface. We reached the helicopters and took off our helmets and gas masks. I noticed that the top of a helicopter, over the roof, but under the propellers, looked EXACTLY like the clutch mechanism on a spinning rod! (Fishing pole) As we flew away, I got to sit in the co-pilot’s seat! There were additional windows in the bottom front corners of the floor. These were so the pilot could see if there was anyone underneath him or her. I took off my headset from its hook on the ceiling and spoke in to it. Someone in my family responded and now that I knew my microphone worked, I was ready for lift-off. When we landed at Treetops, we said goodbye to our brilliant pilots and headed back to the cottage for some R&R….NOT! We grabbed an apple and headed off to the next activity…WOOD CARVING! No R&R for these kids!