Oct 7 We say goodbye to Abbie, she flys home to Australia today. Now it's just Glen and I on the boat again.
Oct 8 - 5:00 am is an early wakeup call because we have to be on shore for 6:00 to be picked up to start our day tour to Tanna Island and the volcano of Mt Yasur. Yasur is the world's most accessible active volcano. Currently it is in Stage 2 activity with Stage 4 being the highest or most unstable grade. Earlier this year Yasur was in Stage 4 and was closed for viewing. We chose to do the day tour thing because it is a day's time to travel by boat, the anchorage there is rough and unreliable, plus your boat gets all covered with volcanic ash - a cleaning nightmare. So we fly at 7:30, arrive at 8:00 and by the time the guide/driver/tour operator get organized we head out at 8:30. It is a 2 hour drive to the volcano, you should have an hour at the volcano and a 2 hour drive back to check in for the 2:50 flight back to Port Vila. The drive is interesting as we see most of the island, but our driver decides to play "bus" picking up and dropping off anybody who wants a ride along the way thus increasing our drive time and shortening our volcano time to 1/2 hour as now there is concern that we can't make it back to the airport in time. But after rushing us through our volcano visit, they take another road back and wonder of wonders, it turns out to be a much better/faster road and we make it back with about an hour to spare (that could have been volcano time!), plus they hit us up for another $1000 vatu (they felt the tour operator hadn't paid them enough for taking the day off of work to show us around). But the volcano.....! The raw power that the earth holds! The mountain is a pile of volcanic ash looking much like a huge pile of black sand. It is a two minute walk up to the crater from the parking area. That caused me to huff a bit - been on the boat too long - to carry a 30 lb pack and ascend straight up. You would laugh at my whining, it is a poured concrete ramp - looks like wheel chair access, but not - too steep. Yasur greets us with a loud roar of puking lava that we can see over the rim as we walk up. There are three vents, A, B, C. A and B are most active. In the short time that we are on top looking into the bowels of this angry sore on the earth's crust we are treated to regular mini eruptions. The sound effects are much the same as the jet cars staging on the drag strip, loud and vibrating. The molten lava is flung high into the sky, (you probably aren't going to like my analogy but this is what I thought when I saw the first one go off) to me it resembled dead bodies being thrown into the air and flopping gracelessly back to the earth in a crumpled fall (yeah I know - gross). We could have watched for a very long time, it is quite mesmerizing. The belching steam and gas, the red glowing lava that cools to black rock in the time it goes up into the air and tumbles back to the earth. It would have been nice to hike around the rim, which a person could, but we didn't have time. They have several resorts near by that cater to volcano watchers and you can come to see it at night too, that would be wild. Maybe next time.
----------
radio email processed by SailMail
for information see: http://www.sailmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment