Kalapana lava flow

Wow, wow, wow.

I headed off in the scorching heat at 3pm towards the viewpoint for the current flow entering the sea and stayed until dusk/dark. I'd meant to set off back while I could still see my feet without torchlight, but the pull to watch just a little longer combined with the speed night comes on caught me out. I had a torch and spare batteries (as recommended ) but it's still hard to plot a route across lava in the dark - only the the final 100m or so but I was relieved to get back on the track.

It's utterly mesmerising to watch. Apparently 2 dumper trucks of lava flow into the sea every second. I was out for 6.5 hours ... nearly 48,000 truck loads (I'm not sure of the conversion factor US:UK, but what does it matter if there were 48,000!)
And if a dumper truck is 8m long, that'd be a single-file line 1382 km, or 860 miles (almost exactly the distance from Land's End to John O'Groats!) per day. I can't tell you how many times I've checked that calculation - that's utterly mind boggling!!Read more