For about as long as I’ve known Dallas, I’ve been telling him that I want to see a volcano when we go to Hawaii and Dallas would always say, “But Kauai IS a volcano.” Sigh. Right. Millions of years ago Kauai was formed from a volcano. After almost 7 years of visiting the Hawaiian Islands and never seeing an active volcano, there was no way I was going to the Big Island and not going to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park!
The island of Hawaii, known as the Big Island, is a volcanic island built from 5 different shield volcanoes that erupted sequentially, one overlapping the other. These volcanoes are Kohala (extinct), Mauna Kea (dormant), Hualalai (active but not erupting), Mauna Loa (the largest volcano on earth, active), and Kilauea (one of the world’s most active volcanoes, actively erupting since 1983). Parts of Mauna Loa and Kilauea are located within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park borders.
So, here’s the thing: It’s not like you drive up to the park, get out of your car and there’s lava flowing all over the place. Eruptions and lava flow are extremely variable. And the area is huge. When you get to the visitor center they’ll tell you what parts of the park are closed (due to volcanic activity or poor air quality) and which parts you’re most likely to see lava flow. Park rangers directed us to an area that was about 2 hours away plus a hike, plus we’d already driven 2 hours, plus it was our last day on the Big Island and we didn’t want to be there all night. Long story short, I still did not see any lava flow.
That is not to say that I did not have a good time. We still saw plenty of cool things to make it worth the trip. We started out with a short walk over to the sulphur banks. This was an area where volcanic gasses seep from the ground and deposit sulphur crystals and other minerals on the rocks along the trail. Really cool to see this stuff coming out of the earth. It looked like we were on another planet or something. Very stinky, though! Also, the fumes are hazardous and people with breathing problems, kids, and pregnant women shouldn’t go near the sulphur banks. You have to stay on the trail, because if you slip and fall in a crack you can be seriously scalded because the steam is so hot. And don’t touch anything because it’s coated with sulphuric acid. Yikes!
Next we walked over to the steam vents. This phenomenon is caused when rainwater sinks through the ground and is warmed by rocks which are heated from the lava below. The hot water then rises through fissures to condense in the chilled air. This steam also contains sulphur dioxide and hydrogen sulphide, so even though you might want to stand there and steam your face, you shouldnt. The vents were pretty cool. You’d just be walking along and there’d be a hole or crack in the earth with hot steam pouring out. Parts of the sulphur banks were like this too, except more stinky!
The steam vents are nearby the Kilauea Caldera, so we walked over to take a look. It’s hard to show in a photo just how immense this was. The summit caldera measures about 3.7 miles x 3.7 miles. Inside there’s a big pit crater called Halema’uma’u Crater. From our viewpoint the crater looked tiny, but it’s about .5 miles x .5 miles and 270 ft below the floor of the Kilauea Caldera. As a side note, Pele is the Hawaiian goddess of fire, lightening volcanoes and dance. Her home is believed to be in the fire pit in Halema’uma’u Crater.
We hiked along the edge of the caldera and then entered into the rain forest where we continued hiking for a mile or two, before returning to the visitor center where the car was parked.
We then drove the car over to Kilauea Iki Crater. This is another pit crater. It was cool to see it a lot closer up than Halema’uma’u Crater. We only went to the lookout point, but you can also hike down onto the crater floor onto what was once a lake of lava. Even after 50+ years since the last eruption, the surface is still warm to the touch!
Finally, we visited Nahuku, known as Thurston Lava Tube, because it was discovered in 1913 by Lorrin Thurston. This was pretty cool. Basically it’s a 500-year old cave and they have lights installed because otherwise it would be pitch black. Lava caves are formed when a river of lava gradually builds solid walls and a ceiling. When the lava flow stops, the last of it passes downhill and a cave is formed.
So, we saw a lot of cool stuff at Hawaiian Volcanoes National Park, just not actual flowing lava. There was an eruption 2 days after we visited, so we missed out on that too. In hindsight we realized that we should have gone to the park on our first day on the Big Island. Some friends who had been there recently told us about a night walk you go on and you get right next to the flowing lava.. and at night its more dramatic than during the day. We just couldn’t swing a night tour on our last night there.
Also, I wish I could have seen the petroglyphs, but it was too far out of the way. Oh well. There’s always next time. I might not be back to the Big Island for 7 more years, but I’m sure we’ll be back some time.
