17TH - 21ST JULY

After the hassle with the car and having to do some shopping so we could eat that night, we arrived at Volcanoes National Park, and went straight to the free campground, which was ace. The National Park is centred on the summit of Kilauea volcano, Hawaii’s most active. The summit is actually four thousand feet high, so the first thing that struck us as strange was that it was pretty cold! There was a fireplace in the shelter where we’d cooked though, and we shared a warming fire with Paddy from Belfast and Jill from Liverpool!! They were in Hawaii for three months and were hitching around, so we had agreed to give them a lift when we went to check out the lava flows. Seemed the obvious thing to do seeing as we had such an enormous car and they were really nice people!!

On our first full day in the park we just figured that we’d check out the general area and get

a feel for the place. First though, we had to buy our entrance permit. It was $10 for a week, or you could buy a years pass which allowed entry into any national park in the US for $50, a serious bargain given the number we’re going to do. As I write this the pass has already paid for itself, the more popular parks like Yosemite, are $20. The Rough Guide had said that what could be seen in terms of molten lava changed all the time, so we weren’t sure what to expect and headed for the visitor centre to see what the current situation was. As it was Saturday it was very busy, but we overheard rangers saying that all that could be seen was where the lava flowed into the ocean, and this at a distance. Apparently the volcano was still erupting, it has been since 1983, but the lave flows on the surface stopped in September last year and since then it has been flowing underground in lava tubes, big underground pipes which channel lave. After all the amazing photos we’d seen of lava flows, we were a little