The night before we left for home, we tried to see lava. We had tried a few days earlier, after visiting volcano national park, but discovered toward the end of our day that the hike was two and a half hours across a charred lava field and we were out of water and sunlight.
We had read of a private access road that would bring us closer, near Hilo, so that’s where we went.
It was supposed to be a 20-minute walk.
We hooked up with another couple, a nice doctor from Maui and his girlfriend, a realtor, whom we later referred to as “danger girl”. You’ll understand why in a few minutes.
(click for larger images)
About an hour in, we did see a few pixels of fire:
We were getting warmer.
I mean this literally. There were gusts of warm air coming up from between crevices in the lava, and one of the slabs I stepped on was HOT.
I jumped off and announced I was turning around. NOW. The sun was going down, I did NOT want to get stuck out there, roasting.
Danger-girl pressed on, her reluctant doctor friend in tow.
As it grew darker, the mountain lit up more and more - quite an amazing sight. But I was getting scared and I wanted to leave. A few more pix, and we turned around. But by then, the sun had gone down. We started walking. And walking. And walking. Three hours in, hubby admitted he was lost. I felt ill, contemplating an evening of either walking aimlessly in vain hope of finding our way back to the unlit area where our car was hiding in the middle of a barren lava field in the dark, or waiting for the sun to come up while we hoped we didn’t become Pele’s next snack.
Just when all hope was lost … hubby spotted a beautiful sight: car tail-lights. Another half hour of trudging brought us to where the locals were parked to watch the evening light-show. Our car was parked next to an old hippie who sounded EXACTLY like Father Guido Sarducci - “I sella the Noni juice-a, I gotta this girl in Japan who moves-a 400 gallons a month … I come-a out-a here-a all-a da’ time-a to watcha da volcano, this one-a time I gotta trapped with lava all arounda me, me and-a my boy, we had quite-a da fire show, totally amazing, we tooka lots of pictures… so this here Noni-a-juice, it’s-a got lots of the antioxidants-a, buildsa your immune-a function, here’sa my card, you write-a to me and I’ll send-a you some in-a-formation… ”
Buddy liked to talk!
