Ruapehu eruption

I first landed in New Zealand in Sept 1995. When this volcano erupted in 1996, I almost packed my bags and went back to Malaysia.

active volcano

Mt. Ruapehu erupted in 1996, soon after I arrived in NZ. It was quite scary for me at first because I have not experienced a live volcano before. I did not know whether I should stay on or migrate back to Sarawak or what!

Christchurch is having many after shocks since the earthquake last Sept. Don't go there! Planes cannot land there this week because of the volcanic ash from Chile, a repeat of the Iceland thinggy in early 2010 when  many travelers were stranded world wide.

Here is Mt. Eden, an extinct volcano in the heart of Auckland. Christine and I are standing at the very edge of the crater to take a photo with the Auckland skyline. In fact Auckland is surrounded by at least 50 volcanoes, apparently, not all of them are extinct!

Fortunately for us, we live in Hamilton, not Auckland or Christchurch.

Rangitoto Island was not there. It suddenly appeared out of the sea, only 600 years ago. By geological time frame, that is a very recent occurrence!

Mt Ngaruhoe has the classical  cone shape and is easy to recognize as a volcano. It is located near the Desert Road, a few km south of Turangi 

Mt. Taranaki, near New Plymouth is slightly bigger and more obvious. The Japanese tourists just love it because in winter, with some snow on it, it looks exactly like Mt Fuji, a holy place which many Japanese worship.

Do you see a volcano here? Yes, it is there. In fact it is our biggest volcano in NZ! Lake Taupo is a huge volcano crater that has been filled  by natural spring water after a gigantic eruption many years ago! This crater lake has an area of 238 square miles, only slightly smaller than the island of Singapore!

At Rotorua we can still see a very active geyser, boiling mud and other  signs of volcanic activities in New Zealand.

Mt. Taranaki

A typical volcano near New Plymouth. In winter it is covered with snow and looks exactly like Mt. Fuji. To save production cost, some of the out door scenes of Tom Cruise's The Last Samurai were actually filmed in New Plymouth NZ. I was pleasantly

surprised to find this 24 inch Reed rock bit, sitting at the side of the road, at a rest stop near New Plymouth. Shell used a lot of Hughes and Reed tri-cone, rock bits in the off-shore oil fields in Sarawak. As a trainee driller, it was my job to install the correct sized nozzles in each bit before use. The nozzles were made of compressed tungsten carbide.