and so we went to see some ancient petraglyphs, or carvings in the lava, including some images of ancient people surfing!! Driving the remaining few miles we parked up at the portable ranger station (on wheels so that it can be moved out of the way of lava flows!!),had some lunch and prepared ourselves for the journey awaiting us!!

The first stretch was a marked trail which crossed a 2003 lava flow which covered the road. You can still see parts of the tarmac and the tops of road signs poking out of the top!! After that we were pretty much on our own. There were five beacons which pointed the way to the viewpoint. Walking over the lava was a very mad experience! It was really flaky and brittle in places, and really smooth in others, but you really had to watch your step. It took about two and a half hours before we reached our destination, but as we got the first glimpse of the bright red

lava we almost gasped in amazement! There it was just bubbling into the Ocean and creating the huge stem plume!! We picked ourselves a good vantage point, and just stood there, transfixed!! There were periodic explosions called tephra jets as the waves enter the lava tubes. As the light began to fall, the intensity of the glowing lava just got better and better! Around this point a guided tour arrived and the guide showed me a photo of a “skylight”, a part of a lava tube where the roof has collapsed and you can see the flowing lava inside. I was very excited to learn that this kind of lava was still visible, and really wanted to see it. The guide said it was a couple of miles inland, but not exactly sure where. I guess a magician doesn’t give away the secrets of how his tricks work!! We spent about another hour or so there, and then decided that we had better start heading back, as it was going to be much harder in the dark! The walk back was incredibly hard but path finder Hel kept on the right tracks