When you're visiting a county-approved lava-viewing area, you don't expect to get close, but certainly expect to at least see some fire and brimstone. It's disappointing, to put it mildly, to find you're literally two miles away, staring at a red glow reflected on a plume of steam, looking as if someone stuck a couple of red lights and a smoke machine in a distant crack in the cliffs.

It wasn't just safety reasons that kept us so far away. Here on the Big Island in Hawaii, many of the fresh lava flows are over private land. If you own a farm and it gets buried under 10 feet of lava, it's still your farm, just 10 feet higher. It doesn't matter how great the spectacle is, you have every right to not let tourists go traipsing over. So, depending on where the latest flows are, actually seeing any lava might involves paying for a guided tour.
The tour I chose involved an hour-long hike in the dark (we had torches) over deep black sparkly rocks that are contorted, fractured and shaped like waves, wrinkles and tresses of giant hair.
Constant change
Most rocks you see are millions, even billions, of years old. These were formed this July. When we stopped to regroup, the sea crashing into the new cliffs behind us, our guide pointed about 20 feet inland. ""I was fishing from that point just last year.""
At our goal, we stood on a cliff about 20 feet above where a minor lava flow oozed into the waves, creating a plume of steam that rose high above our heads. As the wind shifted, we caught glimpses of the big flow, perhaps 500 meters away — a river of red and orange arcing out of the cliff into the ocean.
The centre of the closer flow, at about 1,200 Celsius, was nearly five times hotter than the highest setting on our home oven. This heat is enough to make even the splash from big waves dangerously hot, and the steam and smoke could contain glass particles which can etch camera lenses and scratch corneas.
But lava is just one of many startling spectacles at Hawaii — a destination that actually lives up to the pre-visit aura that surrounds it. When you consider it's one of the 50 states of the U.S., it's a shock to see just how isolated it is.
It's strange to sit by a black lava beach and know that not only does the Pacific surround you, but you're in the middle of an entire hemisphere of water. Though Hawaii has over 400 kilometers of coastline, you never forget you're on an island. The variety of scenery in such a small space is astonishing — blasted lava plains, craggy canyons, huge valleys, rainforests, waterfalls, wind-blasted meadows, as well as surprises such as black sand beaches with wild horses. They all conspire to make you feel as if you've been transported to a demo version of Earth, showing the best and wildest it has to offer.
But the lasting images for me are those thick ripples of lava tussling with the ocean. Standing on that cliff looking down, especially when drenched by one of Hawaii's unpredictable squalls, the lava looked enticing, almost seductive, as if tempting one to jump in.
That would be quite a way to go, cremated by the very blood of the earth, but we saved that for another day and started on the hike back, feeling as if we'd just walked out to the beginning of time.
- Gautam Raja is a journalist based in the U.S.
(Source: Gulf News)