Vanuatu: Lava

The last three days I have been on the island Tanna, to see the volcano Mt. Yasur. One of the most accessible active volcano around the world. After walking for hours and about 22 kilometers somewhere around the island, I would say Tanna is nice, but except the volcano isn’t much going on or to do on that place. The volcano is awesome and I went up two times, cause on the first day a cyclone has nearly blown away the whole volcano.

 

I went up there that  first day and I never experience such a storm around me. Sand, ash, stones flew through the air and my skin felt like being rubbed with sandpaper. Opening the eyes was also nearly impossible and walking or standing normally on the top was impossible. The only shelter were some half meter stones and even behind them the sand and the little stones smashed to the back and into the face. Indeed I had one of these cheap transparent-plastic-bag-raincoats with me. I unpacked this one and put it over me the wrong way, so that the hood is in front of me and I was able to put the hood over my face! It probably looked like I wanna kill myself…hahaha!! But actually it worked and with that shelter on my face I was able to walk around with open eyes. But the wind was so strong that the raincoat broke and my shelter became unusable. Noticing after one hour, that it doesnt make sense waiting and struggling up there longer, I escaped as fast as possible down from the rim. There I went to some locals who have been waiting behind a little house as shelter. After a while some cars came along full packed with other tourists and it was like a comedy show watching them climbing out of the cars. We had lot of fun watching them and running after their hats or other little things. Some of them had short sleeved clothes, no raincoat or anything. They probably thought its like a beach up there... I dont know...  And most of them immediately jumped back into the car and drove the way back down to town.

 

So I went up again yesterday. The cyclone was gone, but it was still very windy and it rained sometimes very hard. But standing on the rim of the volcano and hearing and watching these explosions right from edge, while lava and stones are shooting up 100 of meters into the air - so incredible!