Hawaii Duck Tours- Best Spot For Lava Lovers
If certain travel brochures are going to be believed, red-hot streams and scarlet fountains of lava pour forth nonstop on your island of Hawaii. While it’s gospel that Kilauea has long been continuously erupting since 1983 — including new above-ground action coming from the Pu’u ‘O’o vent that started the other day — the fireworks aren’t always that obvious, or accessible. That’s why those brochures are normally selling an expensive helicopter ride or a boat tour promising up-close adventures with molten rock and steam.
A good your pocket — or nerves — can’t take like the ones of heat, consider one of these less high priced techniques to undergo the power of Pele. Like lava itself, they might leave a perpetual impression, whether it’s flowing.
Receive the latest: The U.S. Geological Survey Hawaiian Volcano Observatory issues daily updates for Kilauea activity, including areas in and out of doors of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park, which also frequently updates its home page when new eruptions occur. Although USGS website uses a trove of Web cams, time-lapse movies and illustrations permitting vicarious thrills, the national park site gives the most detail on exactly what visitors can identify within its borders — and on any road or area closures for safety reasons.
The park service reports that when using the new Pu’o ‘O’o eruption, nighttime observers happen to have been qualified to view “rosy clouds of gas and ash” finding coming from the bottom of Chain of Craters Road, while hikers with flashlights and durable shoes able to make the 2.5-mile round-trip to Pu’u Huluhulu have observed “a deep orange glow” coming from the advancing Pu’u ‘O’o flows and a “reddish glow” from Kilauea’s summit eruption. In the daytime, visitors through park can marvel with the white smoky plume that’s been rising from Kilauea’s Halema’uma’u Crater since 2008; more recently, evening spectators with the Jaggar Museum happen to have been treated to the “steady glow” in your crater besides the new activity at Pu’u ‘O’o.
The county of Hawaii also operates a lava viewing area by the end of Highway 130 in Puna District, the spot that the oozing molten rock makes its way towards the sea. In order to prevent the disappointment of any long drive and possibly strenuous walk for naught, call the lava hotline at (808) 961-8093, updated daily, for current conditions.
Get steamy: While sudden spikes along at the quantity of sulfur dioxide and smoke could potentially cause rangers to shut the park for safety reasons, in smaller doses often provide some of the extremely intriguing sights (and smells) of many volcanic region, further the flashier flowing lava. At the park’s Steam Vents and Steaming Bluff areas, groundwater seeps onto broiling rocks and turns into billowing steam, on the point of another photo-worthy perspective of the many Halema’uma’u plume and also lesser than a mile by means of Kilauea Visitor Center.
Round the road from the parking area will be the more colorful (literally) Ha’akulamanu (Sulphur Banks) area, locations where a wheelchair-accessible boardwalk and paved path leads past rocks covered in yellow and white sulfur crystals, red and brown clay formed by sulfuric acid on lava rock, and stunted ‘ohi’a lehua trees with feathery red blossoms among their soft green foliage. The steam puffing out of the ground includes the distinctive aroma of rotten eggs — hydrogen sulfide, which park visitor Mark Twain quipped was “not unpleasant to sinners.”
