Wednesday - the Vulcano

Visiting the Kilauea vulcano crater. The big crater is surrounded by a road , the crater rim drive, but the road is partly closed due to danger to health because of the toxic gasses that started to steam out of the side of a smaller crater ( Halema'uma'u crater ) at the start of this year. ( see pic )














At several points near the trail steam just comes out of holes in the ground...
The lavaflow that is still active ( it started in 1983 and still continues ) is coming from a point southeast of the crater.

We also visited a lavatube, which is so big you could visit it. Now its under a giant piece of rainforest. Part of it is lit and easy accessable, the last part however is dark and can only be visited by the use of flashlights. We had our little ledlights (Shelly her headlight, me my ledlight keyhanger bought at "Action" shop for 60 eurocents). We went 300 meters down in complete darkness, and coming at the end we dimmed our lights and just sat there, in complete darkness, in earths womb, hearing only the dripping of water coming through the ceiling and our breathing....
How is a lavatube born... A stream of lava runs, the outside cools down and hardens. The inside keeps flowing in the middle. That way the outside forms a sort of tunnellike form. you can actually see a lot of these smaller tunnels in the landscape. Sometimes the ceilings collapse, a hole forms and makes a sort of chimney.