What You Learn From Visiting Volcanoes

Problem
Is it safe to climb a volcano? What's it like climbing a volcano?

Answers
As a child, when I read about volcanoes, I wondered why anybody would take the risk of doing so. What sane person would go up to the rim of a volcano? A member of my family.

Oddly enough, I was really keen to visit volcanoes in Hawaii, USA. I suppose it was the novelty. Like looking over the edge of a cliff, another dangerous activity, which most people like to do, going as near the edge as they dare. Initially, from a distance, you want to go as close as you can, out of curiosity.

Logically, my desire to see volcanoes in Hawaii, was no different to another member of my family wanting to trek up tp the edge of a volcano in Indonesia.

Trekking up in a business and a pleasure. Children, adults, locals, foreigners, all want to climb up. Local guides carry rucksack slung from a long pole carried over the porter's shoulder.

My family's photos show the path starts at base level us dry brown, mud-coloured, sandy earth, with tree roots, so you have to step carefully.

Higher up you reach scree, thick black cold cinders, piece rock thrown up by the volcano, material which is the size of table tennis balls, with pieces the irregular size and shape of a fist, but loose as gravel, so on the way down you slide about.

From the top of one volcano in Indonesia you can see the lake in the middle of the volcano. The volcano is like a bowl. The raised edge was thrown up. the baby volcano to one side was thrown up later.

Is it safe? You may be told it is a 'dormant' volcano. Yet the baby volcano is constantly growing.You might be able to come back later in your lifetime, years later, and see a new higher size and different shape of the baby volcano on your later photo.

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker. Please share my posts.