At around 10 our ride arrived. We had spoken to Surfer Dude, our driver from the airport, and made an agreement to take us to the Volcano National Park today. So we left in unpromising weather, lowering clouds and light, cool rain.
When we got up the volcano it was still cool and grey and wet, but not cold at least. Last year’s eruption meant that there was no lava visible (sadly), and many of the most dramatic points were destroyed or closed off. After a quick overview from a park ranger (I do like their hats, so American) we went off.
The first stop was a short, 1km walk first through pretty flowered shrubs and then alongside an ash field. This was smooth and grey and bleak but in place small bright clumps of plant life, green and pink, had emerged, so it looked very pretty indeed. We met Surfer Dude on the way back and he showed us some of the minerals that came out: the olivine and black, glossy Pele’s tears and hair.
Another couple of brief stops at overlooks and then we went to what the park ranger had said was a 4km walk. The Gentleman Friend and I started off, rain jackets on, since the rain was picking up. The path was marked with stone cairns and led across a stark volcanic landscape, black and lifeless, crisscrossed by petrified lava and lave tubes. We lost the cairns at one point then found them again. There was a gentle upward slope (though gentle is not a word to easily apply to the landscape) and at one point we looked back to see grim black rock around us, rimmed by vivid green forest. The rain became stronger, though it was still not particularly cold. My glasses became wet and it was hard to see my way, especially since there was no path, only the cairns that blended into the landscape. I lost my way once. We came to a set of craters streaked with yellow and pink and white, and then steam vents emerging around us in a place where the ground felt very thin indeed, like walking on autumn leaves but over a lava lake. At long, long last we came to the end of the path: an immense smoking crater with forest and ash battling it out, and white birds swooping with the thermals.
This was definitely more than 4km, and on the way back we discovered that we had actually missed the recommended walk and gone on an 18km one instead. However we explored the short walk, a steep climb through forest to a couple of overlook points, and I must say, I am very pleased with the walk we eventually went with. The surface was very hard indeed, though, and the soles of my feel in their barefoot shoes definitely felt it afterwards.
We drove down towards the sea then, through thick solidified lava fields. There was some incredible vistas here, of black lava flows cutting across green hillsides, and the peculiar drop which marked the original coastline before an eruption created new land, reaching a couple of kilometres into the ocean. At the end was a sea arch, which I had thought sounded a bit whatevs, but it turned out to be spectacular – not the arch itself so much, but the pounding ocean around it, throwing spray tens of metres into the air and causing the earth itself to shake.
Our final stop was over some more steam vents, but it had become cold and misty and of course we were still very wet so it was a brief stop. Then a return, where the GF cooked some pasta and I did a spot of work, and bed to rest tired limbs.