An Awesome Day

Awesome is a word that is seriously overused - and you could make a valid comment that there was nowhere where this was more prevalent than in NZ. But it is overused everywhere around the globe.

"That pizza was awesome"

"How was the coffee?"

"Awesome"

"Isn't Brad Pitt* awesome!"

* substitute for any celebrity you feel must appropriate.

Awesome is everywhere and maybe the use of that word is valid. But what does that leave us with? Where do we go when something really catches our imagination? When we are awe struck? If a pizza or a hot beverage can be 'awesome' then how do we express our state of being when something really.... errr..... well awesome crosses our path? You see - it's a problem.

Well I can truly say that the things I saw this afternoon were awesome. But not in a pizza way but in a huge, fascinating, mesmerising and quite simply wonderful way. On our journey from Coronandel to Taupo we called in at a site if geological interest. Wait! Before you all bugger off to more interesting pages on the internet just take a look at the images below. How can this be? They are not if this world yet for only £15 you can walk on the surface if another planet without the hassle of having to don a space suit and bother with injections. Pools bubble, mud plops and steam drifts over the landscape leaving a sulphurous trail. It's not of this world yet it's 20km from a major town. You can't help wonder how can this be? If the water started to bubble in the UK you'd assume that someone had dumped soap powder upstream. Either that or the national pea eating team champions had gone for a celebratory swim.... Sorry. But you see where I'm going with this. 

New Zealand is a mass of geological goings on. Sorry if that was a bit technical but stick with it. Even as I type I  sat in a friends back garden (he isn't here but we let ourselves in so to speak - that's a whole different story) which happens to be on the largest active volcano in the world. It's only a matter oif time before the whole thing goes and the rose bushes get pelted into orbit along with the lawn, garden furniture and patio heater. It's due. In fact it's about 100 years late. Fashionably late if you like. 

But the scale is so huge that there is absolutely no point in worrying about it. Why bother? If it goes, it goes. And everyone here will have a ringside view. Ok so it would mean the end of life as we know it but it would be truly awesome!