New Zealand

• Floating in a South Sea bubble - Cook Islands
• A Fling with Fiji - Fiji
• On Location - New Zealand
• Wonder Walk - Roaring Burn
• 6 of the best - New Zealand
• Stein on wine, Kiwi style - New Zealand
• Singing the Praises - New Zealand
• No frills? Not us! No expense spared - New Zealand
• Geyserland! - Rotorua
• A perfect 10 for Polynesia - Tahiti

IT WAS ON OUR WAY to Rotorua that we almost got our second fine! (We’d already been fined £75 for forgetting to declare our golf shoes when we arrived at Auckland a few days before.)

With very little crime Kiwi cops have nothing better to do than lie in wait for speeding motorists.

And so it was that my wife, taking her turn at the wheel, was flagged down by a patrol car with flashing lights and sirens on Highway One. Smiling sweetly, she apologised for being over the 60mph limit and astonishingly the policeman put his book away and waved us on. It never happens when guys are driving!

Rotorua, or geyserland as it is known locally, has a permanent whiff of sulphur from its bubbling mud pools and geysers. Steam just shoots out of the ground.

Natural central heating

Off the main street you’ll find the Maori thermal village of Whakarewarewa. With hot water hissing out of crevices and hot mud bubbling up all over the place the villagers have natural central heating, hot water for bathing and the ground serves as a convenient oven. Twice a day they perform traditional Maori songs and dances for visitors.

We visited the Waiora Spa at Hell’s Gate for a natural mud bath washed off by a dip in a hot thermal spring pool and followed by a wonderful stress-relieving massage and traditional manuka tea.

Solitaire Lodge, with its 10 luxury suites, is perched in a spectacular position on Lake Tarawera just 20minutes from Rotorua and was probably our favourite lodge.

We rented a pontoon boat and headed out across the lake to Hot Water Beach where you can bury a trout in the sand and it will cook in an hour. The water bubbling out of the steaming rock pools is incredibly hot, so watch your feet.

The lake is dominated by Mount Tarawera, a volcano that last erupted in 1886, burying a complete village and destroying the Pink and White terraces, a famous Victorian watering hole once considered to be one of the great wonders of the world.

The Buried Village has been partially excavated and provides a wonderful snapshot of life in Victorian times, together with pictures of the famous Terraces – a honeycomb of thermal rock pools created by pink and white silica formations.

On the day of the eruption a guide called Sophie, whose job it was to take visitors across to the Terraces by boat, describes how the water at the shoreline kept receding then returning. The whole lake was tilting like tea in a saucer as the pressure built up below the volcano.

We flew by helicopter from the lodge out to Mount Tarawera, which is dormant, landing on the crater, which has spectacular views for hundreds of miles. We thought we’d seen it all but then our pilot, Tim Barrow, announced we were flying out to White Island, which we knew to be a live volcano!

As the chief pilot of Helipro, Tim is ready at short notice to leave for any emergency in Asia or Australia that calls for helicopters. His Squirrel helicopter can be stripped down and ready for transportation to any disaster area in just 10 minutes.

Last year he and other Helipro pilots helped to fight the bush fires that were threatening Sydney.

So we felt quite safe in his hands as we headed out towards the speck in the middle of the ocean known as White Island. This is a very active volcano which last blew in 2001, raining ash down on Auckland many miles away – and we were going to land on it!

All very middle earth

Seismic activity on the volcano was currently at level one, said Tim, and picking up. At level two he wouldn’t venture near. It all felt very Middle-earth.

White Island is like nothing you’ve seen before. Steaming volcanic vents, boiling water and crystallised sulphur with a bubbling cauldron of sulphuric acid at its centre.

Handing us hard hats and masks with oxygen, Tim led us gingerly to the crater’s edge. We peered over into the turquoise lake of hot bubbling acid and agreed that Dr Crippen would have loved it here.

In the background there’s a constant roar, like airline turbines, of steam escaping. We stood among the remains of a factory where people had once worked extracting the sulphur for use in medicines. It was wiped out in an eruption and never rebuilt.

Lifting off from the crater and sweeping round for one last look we spotted a huge pod of dolphins, 40 or more, and a shoal of bright blue fish.

We tracked them for a mile or so before turning and heading back towards the mainland.

There are plenty of other adventurous activities to choose from in Rotorua including jetboating, rafting, kayaking, bungee jumping and abseiling.

We tried out the extreme Off Road NZ track, driving 4WD Suzuki jeeps, through gulleys, across rivers and down near vertical muddy banks.

It was exciting stuff and at least there was no danger of us getting stopped for speeding. But when you’ve experienced the adrenaline surge of landing on a live, bubbling volcano nothing else really compares.