But first a few precautions: Tour guides began distributing hard hats and gas masks.
From here the tourists who'd paid for a half-day excursion to the volcano would be ferried on an inflatable dinghy. Skipper Paul Kingi killed the engines and slipped an anchor beneath the waves, bringing the boat to rest a hundred yards offshore. Wisps of steam and toxic gases wafted into the noonday sky. They were 30 miles off the coast of New Zealand but felt farther-as if they'd motored into an otherworldly realm.
White Island was just the way he remembered it: exotic, imposing, alien.
On the aft deck of the Phoenix, a 60-foot catamaran, Geoff Hopkins put an arm around his daughter and stared with apprehension and excitement at the craggy rock that loomed out of the sea directly ahead of them.
