| You
can take a helicopter trip around Kilauea volcano leaving from either Kona
on the West coast or, as I did, from Hilo on the East coast.
It's definitely worth the price, if it's not cloudy or foggy.
At the
moment, the main caldera at the top of Kilauea is basically dormant, but
there is activity at the Puu Oo vent on the Northeast slope of the volcano.
Once you get to the vent, you might be lucky enough to have a
view inside the crater and see its active lava pools, depending on
the cloud and smoke cover, and on how much activity there is at the time.
For some reason, the lava coming out of Kilauea mostly doesn't flow on
the surface of the lava field. Instead, it flows underneath
in very long lava tubes, appearing on the surface only as it nears the
ocean. Even when the lava ceases to come out of the mountain,
the lava in these tubes continues, resulting in hollowed out lava tubes,
like the Thurston lava tube near Kilauea's main caldera. However,
the lava is fragile, and sometimes the roof of the lava tube collapses,
resulting in a "skylight". If lava is still flowing through
the tube, then you can see the lava flowing
through the skylight. This lava eventually exits the tube
near the ocean, and you can see that the
lava as it flows into the ocean, creating new land and clouds of steam
from the boiling seawater. |