Volcanos National Park is located
on the Hilo side of the big island of Hawaii, so it is not on the usual
tourist track. Most of the people who do visit, tend to stick to the crater
rim drive which is most spectacular. Still, we must recommend the Kilauea
crater hike and the shorter Kilauea Iki hike which traverses a smaller crater
near the main caldera. You can actually combine the two hikes, but this
takes some doing.
The world down on the crater floor is an eerie one, cut off from the world by the high crater walls. The ground is black, with the newer lava blacker and the older lava eroded to paler shades of gray and red. Everything is out of scale and following the trail means following the cairns. Sulphurous smoke seeps out of the cracks in the black lava sheet. Sometimes when you walk, it sounds hollow, like you are walking on broken china. It is quite an other worldly experience.
To make it even more fascinating, even
in the newer lava, there are little plants, growing out of the various cracks
and fissures. Some of these are ferns, taking advantage of humid microclimates.
Others are the ohia, with its brilliant red flowers. Some of the older lava
is from the 19th century, some is from as recently as the 1980s. Here, on
Hawaii, you can watch as new land is created.
The Kilauea crater is a magical place. There is nowhere else on earth like it.
For more on where to stay and what to do in Hawaii, check out our newsletter for April 1999.
