Ruapehu

Hi there! I’m sat at the Bayview Chateau Tongariro looking at this view:

OK, so there are a couple of reasons why that’s not entirely true. . .  First of all it’s cloudy and misty, so I can’t see the mountain at all.  Also, it’s not currently erupting.  At least, not as far as I can tell through the mist and fog.

Oh, I guess there’s a third reason: I am facing the wrong way.  But with the cloud and fog it doesn’t really matter, and the desk was setup this way, so moving it around just to look at the fog clouds seems like a lot of effort.

Nonetheless, this is a beautiful part of a beautiful country, and my wife and I just enjoyed a nice walk around the local walking trails (in our ski gear: it’s pretty cold).

Anyway, the visitors centre had some cool displays on volcanoes.  For example, did you know that the pyroclastic thingumies from the Lake Taupo eruption traveled at 600 – 900 kph!  Now, I like a good disaster movie as much as the next man, but I reckon even Tom Cruise couldn’t outrun that in a jeep.  Check out how big it was!

On that note, is it visitors centre, or visitor’s centre, or visitors’ centre? (ignore the centre/ center debate – what’s the correct punctuation here?)  Answers on a pickled herring.

So, the Taupo eruption was a big deal.  Want to know more?