Day 17: Volcano Discovery Tour

Wow, day 17 is here ... easily the most highly anticipated day of our trip, because today we are going to hike to active lava with the folks from Volcano Discovery.

It starts off innocently enough with breakfast at nondescript Basik Açai near the hotel.

Well, the outside may be nondescript; their açai bowls are phenomenal and there are quite a few to choose from

We really fell in love with these bowls and we were thrilled to discover our local Wegmans sells açai base for smoothies. As good as Basik Cafe? Probably not, but still tasty.

My favorite is the Puna bowl. Here's Sandy enjoying her Islander on the loungers at the hotel.

After a brief stroll along Alii Drive it's time to get ready for our private 6-hour custom tour of Kilauea. If that sounds expensive it was! We were hoping other people would join our date and turn it into a more affordable group tour, but that never happened. Would it be worth it? I was quite worried since I was the one pushing for it.

Keep in mind also that conditions are constantly changing and an ocean flow one day, might be gone the next. But today we are in luck!

The fastest way to get from Kona to Hilo is across Saddle Road, once considered one of the most dangerous roads in Hawaii and to this day still a somewhat controversial route when it comes to traversing it by rental car. It's been upgraded many times since those first days and other than limited sight lines and weather related hazards none of the things I read about it online sounded particularly worrisome.

So off we go in our trusty 2-wheel drive rental car.

Starting near sea level and cresting at 6,632ft (2,000+ meters) you'll pass through a variety of landscapes along the way.

 

If you're lucky you might even catch a glimpse of wild goats

Wish you could have been there with us? Well, you can, sort of ... here's a little movie from inside the car:

Doesn't look scary, does it? We didn't think so either, although we did at one point get caught in torrential downpour that reduced visibility down to nothing (not the drizzle you see in the movie!). Put on the flashers and rode it out slowly just like we would have back home ... no biggie.

For lunch we stop at Short N Sweet Bakery in Hilo, where they have all kinds of yummy pastries and sandwiches.

Butterflies dancing in my stomach we meet up with our guide Neil at the Kalapana Village Cafe. He will drive us the rest of the way to the start of our hike as it involves crossing private property that requires a permit to access. He keeps all kinds of cool laminated pictures and graphs in the car to show how the area has changed over time and what the major eruptions looked like.

Poor Neil is like a Sherpa, weighted down by an enormous backpack overflowing with snacks, drinks, a full-size tripod, walking sticks, first aid kit, emergency signals and who knows what else ... oh right, our gas masks. Gulp!

No worries, Neil is quick to assure us that they are there only as a precaution and he has never had to use them. He does warn us that it will be a strenuous hike as we trek across the uneven, jagged lava and that it will cut like glass if you happen to go down. Sandy happily accepts one of the walking sticks, but I prefer to live dangerously.

Lots of new growth in the older section of the lava field at the start of our hike.

A perfect double rainbow!

Neil is a geologist with a passion for volcanoes and his knowledge and love for the volcano shine through the entire time. No matter what questions we throw at him, he knows the answer and entertains us with facts and theory the whole way.

The lava becomes more and more barren as we go.

But the detail and color when you look at it closely is astonishing. Not one piece is alike.

Impression of pineapple

The opposite: a pineapple print bulge ... I asked Neil, but I don't remember his explanation.

Look at those clouds up ahead ... we are so close! I love the mind-is-blown stance of the young man in front of us.

There is a lot of activity in the area we are now and Neil is very careful as he tells us where to walk. "Don't stop now," he warns us as we cross a smooth metallic grey section that is still very new and we can feel the heat radiating up from below. I would have been really freaked out about this, but Neil has been great in alleviating our irrational lava fears.

If you're more into movies scroll down towards the end of this post and you'll find a short live-action compilation movie of what we saw today, but I think the pictures are worth a look too.

Neil sets us up in prime viewing location -- as close as you can safely get, then he helps me set up the full-size tripod. We never moved from this position until we walked by the surface flows on our way back so all of the following pictures were taking with a telephoto lens.

Other tour groups are starting to show up too now, but everyone is keeping their distance and staying behind where we've set up camp. That means we'll have an unobstructed view of one of the most spectacular sights on the planet ... a lava ocean entry.

We can even see some surface flows not far uphill from where we are. Lava is generally very slow moving, but Neil keeps his eye on them throughout the evening to make sure our position stays safe.

A little close-up; see how quickly the outside air cools the exposed lava? That's what cause the ripples in the lava; the outer layer cools quickly, but is moved onward by the liquid lava underneath.

Neil sets us up with some snacks and beverages from his wide assortment and then it's showtime. Even like this it looks unreal to me, but he assures us that it will only get better as the night goes on.

I struggled to narrow these down to acceptable numbers, but decided in the end that since this is something few people will ever have the chance to see in person it would be alright to go a little bit overboard.


Lots of overexposure due to the sun ... I already think it looks amazing and this is just the beginning!

Close-up of red hot liquid lava battling it out with the ocean ... this is how new land is formed!

You can see in this picture that the breaking waves often would knock down parts of the still fragile lava and dragging them out to sea, only to start the process over again with the next wave.

You can see several ocean entry points along the coast here.

A large lava vault opening in the distance

Hard to tell, but it looks like I've captured a small shelf collapse in the center of the picture. If you look directly below the large dark rock jutting out you'll notice three little black dots in front of spray shooting upwards from underneath.

One of the most dangerous aspects about watching lava entering the ocean is the risk of shelf (also know as bench or delta) collapse. Often times the underside of a bench is unstable and the constant assault of the waves wears it down until it can no longer support the lava on top. Acres of land can disappear in an instant.

I found these two great movies on YouTube (not mine) that show a bench collapse:

• Time lapse of 34 acre lava delta collapse (fast fwd to see the coastline change drastically)
• Explosive collapse by night (talk about fireworks!)

Ok, back to our little ocean entry flow nearby

These lava boat tours are insane! Their safety was called into question many times during my pre-trip research and watching them bob around on the waves told me we made the right decision.

Neil is impressed by the heavy flow coming down and says it's been a while since he's seen it like that. We picked a great day to come out!

According to Hawaiian legend we are witnessing an epic battle between the Goddess of fire, Pele and her sister Namakaokaha'i, Goddess of the sea.

The light reflecting off the lava is starting to color the waves

Without the sunlight the steam clouds really pick up the colors

It's getting dark quickly now and the camera won't even attempt to auto-focus under these conditions.

Is this even real?!

Darkness ...

Neil lets us enjoy watching Pele and Namakaokaha'i battle it out for as long as we want. It's hard to imagine that all of Hawaii once started this way ...

Walking back across the silvery smooth section we crossed on the way in, is a completely different experience in the dark ... without daylight you can see the red hot lava sizzling through the cracks. Everywhere! Yikes, I think I'm glad we weren't able to see that earlier.


The surface flows are unbelievable in the dark. Neil scouts ahead and finds me a spot where "the tripod won't melt." No joke.

I think he finds me the next closest spot because the heat radiating from the lava is unbelievable.

One thing I had forgotten about until I was putting together the compilation movie for the blog, was the sound hot lava makes. You're probably thinking, it makes a sound? Yep, fresh pahoehoe lava makes a crackling sound, almost like glass breaking, as the solidifying outer layer gets broken by the hot lava moving underneath. Check out the end of the movie if you want to hear it too.

I made a little three-panel time lapse panorama to show the slow progression and how it constantly changes patterns and colors. There are 83 seconds between the first and the last picture.

(Panorama - please click me for full screen view)

I turned around for one final overview shot before we started our hike back to the car. I purposefully overexposed it to show you that when darkness falls "the hills are alive." Ok, bad Sound of Music pun and obviously the lava is no less active during the day time, it's just harder to see.

Last, but not least, please enjoy this short (3 minute) compilation of about 10 different movies I made during the tour.

(Best viewed in 720+HD on YouTube)

We make it back to the car in record time and unscathed. Neil goes through a quick recap of what we've seen and presents me with freshly cut pineapple spears and a bunch of rambutan, a lychee like fruit that I've never tasted. The pineapple quickly disappears, but I'm saving the rambutan as a special treat for tomorrow.

It's close to midnight by the time we get back to the hotel and we're both exhausted from a day filled with unforgettable experiences.

Goodnight from the Royal Kona Resort!