After the delights of seeing and hearing a volcano at night, we headed out the following day with lots more volcanic adventure ahead of us.
We started the day with a trip down Crater Rim Drive, an eleven mile road around the Kilauea Caldera in the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park. Solidified lava can be seen for miles around the drive, from high up on the hilltops, all the way down to the coastline.
“Lava really has no regard for where it goes or what it ploughs through.”
We parked the car at different points along the drive and walked out into the lava fields, our breath constantly being taken away by the thought that it was once a red hot molten lava flow. The magnitude and scale of the lava field really has to be seen to be believed and it’s hard to give a true perspective in a photo.
It was easy for us to see how the lava flowed down to the sea, with the undulations in the solidified lava clearly visible. Where life was once destroyed by the lava, there are now signs of life beginning again, with small plants growing out of cracks within the rock.
The power and force of the lava flow was at the forefront of our minds when we saw it cut straight through a road, making it impassable. It reminded us that lava really has no regard for where it goes or what it ploughs through.
Driving away from Crater Rim Drive, we had to make a stop when we saw a lookout point over a flat lava field. The force and pressure of the molten lava must have been so intense to flow over a relatively flat landscape and it was breathtaking to see.
“Fear got the better of me. I just held my breath as Rich edged closer and closer…”
With the Kilauea Caldera area being an active volcanic zone, we knew that beneath our feet, albeit way way beneath our feet, hot molten lava would be swirling around and while it would have been amazing (and scary) to see it first hand, we were certainly very glad that there were no volcanic eruptions while we were there.
Our day continued with a hike on the Nāpau Trail up to the Pu‘u ‘Ō‘ō vent, through lava flows created from the Mauna Ulu eruptions.
We walked for hours, carefully taking steps on the uneven ground created by the hardened lava. The higher we climbed the stronger the wind became and by the time we reached the vent the wind was howling. The noise of the wind was nothing compared to the grumbling noises from the vent though!
I found it quite frightening being able to walk right up to the edge of the vent, in fact I found it so frightening that I didn’t walk all the way up to the edge. Fear got the better of me. I just held my breath as Rich edged closer and closer, for him it wasn’t scary, it was fascinating!
We didn’t pass many people on our hike and we were conscious that we were well into the late afternoon and didn’t want to get stuck out there alone and in the dark, so we didn’t spend long at the vent and soon headed back down the trail to the carpark.
Before we headed back to our hostel we had one more sight to see, Nāhuku, the Thurston Lava Tube, a prehistoric lava tube that you can walk right through!
After a short twenty minute walk through a fern tree forest with the rain starting to fall, we saw the cavernous entrance to the lava tube ahead of us. Lit all the way through for visitors to be able to see where they are going, the entrance looked bright and inviting.
Once inside the lava tube it felt less than inviting. Cold, wet and very dark in places, it was an experience to walk through but definitely not somewhere we wanted to stay long!
Lambs on the loose 