 A relic of a previous eruption serves an ominous warning |
I had already dubbed myself the world’s most inept volcano-chaser. I’d been to some of the most famous eruption sites in the world, yet seen little more than enough steam to make a cup of tea.
Admittedly my spectacularly unsuccessful lava quests were usually a by-product of a journey for some other purpose. I did manage to broil my buttocks in the steamy flooded caldera of Deception Island down near the Antarctic Peninsula and spy the ominous cone of Krakatoa before a rising storm blew our tiny boat back to port on the western coast of Java. But what I really wanted to see was the pure unbridled fury of our planet in formation and witness the irrepressible torrent of a ravenous lava stream consuming all before it. So I set my sights on the glittering jewel set in the middle of the Ring of Fire – the mighty Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawai'i.
Of the four hundred or so active volcanoes currently smoking and venting around the Pacific Rim, the Big Island of Hawai'i contains both Kilauea and Mauna Loa, two of the most continuously active eruptions around.
[See Images]
|
