Where there's smoke...

Of course, Kilauea isn't just a volcano that erupted recently, its a volcano that is erupting.  The most active volcano on the planet is erupting near constantly. Just not quite as much as normal when we were there.  Normally there is one crater down on the East Rift Zone that you can see a lava lake, and a fissure that opens up near the sea where the lava pours into the ocean. Very photogenic stuff and great for tourism.  But Pele (A Hawaiian goddess who's nominally in charge of volcanoes and fire, not that the Hawaiian gods and goddesses are gods of anything the way the Greek and Roman ones were) is her own master and isn't always obliging.  Occasionally obliterating villages and destroying roads and occasionally not doing very much at all.  In early March, there was a burst of activity, which saw a small collapse in the East Rift Zone, the lava lake shrank back into the volcanic vent and the far eastern fissure stopped erupting.  So there was nowhere to watch lava whilst we were there.  A bit disappointing but still...

It is an active volcano, and active volcanoes do tend to smoke a bit, even if there isn't lava coming out. Which is still pretty damn cool.  An boy does Kilauea smoke.  There's been elevated sulphur dioxide levels in the National Park for a couple of years, indicating that something is going on. Half of the park (luckily the more boring half) is closed to visitors.

This is the view across, the small side crater at Kilauea, with the big one stretching off into the distance.

Then at the end of the day, after cycling around the park, we took a quick drive round to the other side of the crater/caldera in the fading light.  In the photo above, the circular thing is the crater. Pretty much everything in shot is the caldera, its about 3x5km. With smoke rising up above, and as darkness fell, we got an unexpected treat.

Whilst you might not be able to see the lava (its a couple of hundred metres below the surface in the vent), you can see the glow of the lava, bouncing off the smoke plume. Its so awesome! And as it gets darker (and colder!) the light gets brighter.  Luckily there's a pretty damn good museum on the caldera rim (along with the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory) to keep warm and entertained in between just standing outside and watching the amazing glow. A little view into the earth's interior (kind of).

Plus, as a little aside, the flanks of Mauna Loa, which sits above Kilaeua, have started expanding.  Something is brewing under big island and its probably magma!