Our guided tour began at the steam vents. These are fissures in the earth which produce - you guessed it - steam! The steam is really steam - its hot and makes you sweat. It is slightly stinkier than regular steam, however.
You can see that they have the vents railed off so no one falls in. This didn't stop at least all of us from sticking limbs and whatnot right into the steam and remembering that yes, steam is, in fact, hot. This whole area was surrounded by similar steam vents. It was kind of cool, and yet very weird all at the same time.
The next stop on our tour was to go see the caldera at the top of Mount Kilauea. This is the "most active" volcano I was speaking of, and the star of the national park. The caldera is the fancy word for the crater... although within this giant crater are other craters, which I guess is why they call the giant crater a caldera instead. Kilauea has exhibited some sort of volcanic activity non-stop since January of 1983, and has had some sort of activity occuring frequently since 1952, including 34 eruptions.
It's also the home of Pele, the volcano Goddess, just so you know.
In March of 2008, the large crater in the caldera re-opened in an explosive manner and blew the observation overlook to smitherines. The park had to close the road which drove around the caldera, and evacuate a section of the island, due to poison gases. Today, the poison gasses (sulfur dioxide) continue to spout from the crater and a rate of 80 tons per day. Obviously, the road is still closed, and geologists who have flown over the fissure say there is a large lava lake flowing under the crater!
Needless to say, all we saw was a plume of toxic gas. Impressive, but not the lava show we were hoping for. I guess its the safest thing to see on the volcano! Tomorrow we explore more alien landscapes from Volcano National Park.
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