Pele didn’t wait long to show off her colorful display to the world. The plane was on the taxiway when the announcement came from the cockpit about an eruption in the Kilauea Caldera. I looked at Carl and he at me, just shaking our heads. Just our luck.
Fast forward 8 years and you can well imagine my excitement when Carl returned from the lobby a few days ago with the news of another collapse of the partially cooled lava bench. You may remember hearing of a 26 acre piece of new real estate collapsing into the ocean on New Year’s Day moments after Park Officials convinced people to move from the area. Now, a steady stream of lava called a fire hose, by the media, had begun to flow. The most in years one reporter claimed. From the moment I saw the video, with mouth agape, I knew what I had to do. Web search for lava boat tours coming up and then 15 minutes later, I was booked on Lava Ocean Tours for Saturday, the 4th at 4:00.
On Thursday, the media talked about the geologists who narrowly escaped injury or death while trying to set up cameras to monitor the formation of other cracks. Those cameras captured footage of the latest bench collapse and at that moment, it was believed the lava had all but stopped flowing. Just my luck again. It was as if Pele was torturing me for some slight. I even thought about buying a nip of rum as an offering. My religious beliefs frown on that sort of thing but, hey, when in Rome… right?
Cut to Saturday, the 4th, at 4:00 PM. Captain Shawn arrived to call the roll, give a mandatory Coast Guard briefing and to explain how the trip would go. He also called all 60 + aged people together, gave them a warning about back, neck and leg injuries before allowing us to board.
The boat, situated on it’s trailer measured over 40 feet long and it was 10 feet to the gate in the railing. All of us boarded by way of a 10 foot step ladder while the boat was still on the trailer in the parking lot. The crew of 40 did a once around the park and arrived at the boat launch with a fair number of spectators lining the shore to watch as the truck backed us down into the narrow harbor.
And then we were off, running parallel with the shore line and fairly skimming over the waves, each of us strangers wrapped up in our thoughts. Questions plagued all of us. Would the boat ride be too rough, how wet would we get, will the electronic equipment be safe, would we really get a chance to view one of natures most spectacular shows?
45 minutes into the trip, we began to see steam ushering forth from the ocean’s surface. 10 minutes after that, we saw a red glow through the clouds of moisture and then we began to feel the heat from 200 feet away.
And then we were there no more than 50 feet from the almost surrealistic site. A glowing fire fall of 2100 degree molten lava endlessly cascading from the miniscule appearing vent, a pipeline the Hawaiians would say came straight from the goddess herself.
All of us, as if we were one, began snapping photos with cameras, recording various lengths of video to try to show those who were not there just what it was like at the bottom of the ever changing stream. At times, the flow would be bright orange and full as it cascaded into the ocean while at other times, the white hot ribbon narrowed and as the gases within mixed with the overly warm sea water, it sent ejecta outward, sometimes the height of the falls.It took some effort for me to stop taking photographs with both my cell phone camera and my Nikon D200 but I forced myself to sit quietly and just watch. Every once in a while I would hear myself say, “wow!” That was about the only word that came to mind. And still is.
I sat for hours afterwards, studying each and every image,
watching the videos over and over with that very same word
coming to mind. We were back at the harbor about 7:00,
home by 8:00, but unable to sleep until almost midnight.
Even now, I have to pinch myself and say, “that was real
and I was there first hand. Wow!”
1 comment:
it was great. Thanks 😉
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