At the hotel I received a call from the heliport that the flight had been delayed due to low cloud, so we went out to a local restaurant called Mcdonalds for breakfast and a cup of free Internet.

On returning to the hotel a message had been received that they were almost ready so we waited for 20 minutes to be picked up.

Geoff (a rugby fan) joined us on the flight which duly took-off with a crowd that had formed to look at the spectacle - I waved out of the window as we rose into the air only to be astonished to see this crown waving back, that will teach me to be so cynical!

We sped off over the rolling hills and many geysers as we left the town with these looking slightly odd bedfellows as you don't expect to see a lush green carpet with White steam snaking into the sky.

The pilot was a Dutch woman who had also worked as a guide around the world including Iceland and many parts of Asia, she pointed out many of the features below which ranged from secret places where great Maori chiefs had been buried to a huge number of extinct volcanoes which could be seen in the distance.

Our mission was to land on two, one extinct with the other active and after 15 minutes we landed on our first one, after the blades had stopped rotating we all jumped out as a crack team of SAS tourists ready to capture any new experience that came before us.

As we looked out into the distance you can't help but notice how green this land Is with it's covering of pine trees that seemed to extend into infinity (it's New Zealand biggest export) but the most striking difference is the strange and irregular shapes that these mountains and hills take no wonder the Lord of the Rings was filmed here.

As we had all passed our initiation test we changed seats on the helicopter (the pilot didn't seem to object when I sat on her seat - haho) and off we went across the sea to an island we could see in the distance that seemed to be permanently covered in cloud.

It took another 20 minutes to reach this island but as we got closer we could see that this was no normal cloud but in fact was steam coming up from a LIVE volcano and as we searched for a place to land we started to experience some turbulence which added to our nervousness.

The helicopter eventually came to rest on this strange alien Luna landscape but this time we were issued with hard hats and breathing apparatus to help us cope with the toxic gas's that were present in this hostile enverioment.

As we walked across this menacing landscape which hissed and spat at us we felt very unwelcome with every footstep we made was with great caution as the colours underfoot indicated its content the Sulpher which was yellow, or white silicon to the brown oxides.

As we approached the centre of the volcano we put on our masks as things were definitely hotting up with huge gas plumes shooting out from the many vents around us made it very difficult to see where we were walking, we arrived at the centre of the volcano to see a pool of water (acid) at 800c, we did not hang about for long as the conditions at the edge were do uncomfortable.

We then de-robed and lifted off this moon scape to head back to civilisation and a visit to the museum where we spotted a real live Kiwi.