Going with the flow in Hawaii

By SARAH ELL

The familiar voice sounds so out of place. As I drive alone through a desolate landscape, on the way to see molten lava ooze out of the earth's core, the Hawaiian classic hits radio station starts to play I Got You.

It is surreal to hear Neil Finn's voice so far from home, in such a hostile environment. Although it is only a 35-minute flight from Honolulu to Hilo airport on "the big island" of Hawaii, then a half-hour drive along well-maintained and mostly empty roads, I feel a million miles away from the sanitised beach and endless fast-food joints of Waikiki.

I am driving down the slopes of the shield volcano of Kilauea to see the active lava flow of Pu'u'O'o, near where it enters the Pacific Ocean.

After stopping at the visitor information centre, I drive down the Chain of Craters road towards the sea. The road runs around the edge of the Kilauea crater rim, past evidence of earlier eruptions including lava tubes and extinct craters, before starting to descend.

The 60km round trip from the park headquarters descends the slopes of Kilauea, which has been oozing lava - and occasionally erupting more violently - for about 1000 years. This land-building is part of a process which has created the chain of Hawaiian islands, as a thin part of the earth's crust has slowly passed over a "hot spot" of magma close to the surface. A total of 220ha of new land has been added to the island of Hawaii since this eruption began in 1983, and the flows show no sign of abating.

The road is well maintained, reeling out across fields of broken lava from eruptions from the late 1960s and early 1970s. This land is so new it has not yet been colonised by greenery, although metrosideros trees, closely related to our pohutukawa, are beginning to grab a foothold.

The road descends sharply - 300m in just a few kilometres - and the sea comes into view. The volcanic zone sits at the southeastern extremity of the Hawaiian island chain; there is nothing but roiling open ocean between here and Mexico.

Quite a few cars are already parked at the road's terminus. There is no carpark as such; earlier in the year a lava flow obliterated it on its inexorable path to the sea. Though it is a good idea to try to beat the heat by arriving reasonably early in the day, by mid-morning it is already around 30C, the searing heat of the sun barely cooled by the vigorous breeze blowing in from the North Pacific.

I have taken the park service's rather stern list of necessary equipment for the tramp across the lava seriously, especially its recommendations about how much water to carry.

The guidelines suggest one to three quarts of water (1.13-3.4 litres) of water per person, with a hat, sunglasses, sunscreen, full-length pants, sturdy shoes and a first-aid kit. I have all of the above, although I leave the first-aid kit in the car.

A pair of rangers are stationed in a small pre-fab by the side of the road, keeping a casual eye on tourists and answering questions from antipodeans.

Today the "live" lava is about 30 minutes' walk away. The first part of the track is on what used to be the road, before the volcano came and claimed it. Where the road meets the lava flow, yellow markers indicate a path inland, by a sign which helpfully says: "warning - risk of methane gas explosion where lava meets vegetation. Stay at least 150m away."

I can't help but think that 150m is much closer to a lava-fuelled methane gas explosion than I would like to be.

Walking across the lava is hard work. There is no track, just a trail of yellow plastic markers affixed to the solidified lava flows. There is a surprising number of other people making the same pilgrimage, or returning from the flow.

Walking across the lava, staring down at its surface, is hypnotic; it is easy to wander away from the yellow markers, disoriented by the devastated landscape.

The solidified lava is an amazing colour - charcoal grey with an iridescent sheen - and takes on many forms, according to how fast it has flowed before cooling. Some parts are smooth and shiny, with a glazed-looking surface, or with the appearance of drops of solder. Much of it is jumbled and broken, like a mass of home-made hokey pokey. Where the lava has flowed quickly, it has formed twisted ropes and swirls, and where it has sagged under its own weight are swags and billows like wrinkled skin. Broken chunks of it lie on the surface, the inner layers a rich brown colour, like pieces of a discarded chocolate brownie.

Then, all of a sudden, there it is. I come across a group of sightseers standing on a rocky outcrop and realise they are looking at molten lava, no more than a few metres away.

Even though the sun is bright, the lava glows bright orange-red as it seeps out of the crust. It moves at the speed of golden syrup pours after being kept in the fridge. It oozes, spreads, slithers over existing layers of cooled lava at its own pace, the tongue at the leading edge glowing fiery, a thin, dark crust quickly forming behind it as the surface cools. A tinkling sound, like thin glass being crushed, rises from the lava as the crust cools and contracts.

There are several outbreaks in a small area, and I move, carefully, away from the main crowd to watch my own little part of the show. With a puffing hiss, a wad of what looked like solid crust, more than a metre long, is pushed up and broken apart by molten lava. It oozes out of its confining shell like the filling in a primeval cream bun, the hot rock sizzling and glistening in the crevice.

Even from two metres away the heat is intense; any closer and the radiation from the molten rock would be too hot to bear on bare skin.

One of the rangers on duty at the lava flow says that it is this incredible heat that stops most people from injuring themselves here. However, there is the danger of walking on areas of just-cooled crust which conceal ferociously hot molten lava beneath; the crust will carry your weight, but it is still hot enough to melt the soles of your shoes.

The rangers, and the American tourists, seem to have an incredibly casual attitude to standing so close to live volcanic activity.

The park is open 24 hours a day, and the rangers recommend coming out at night with a picnic dinner and "enjoying the show" after dark. Frankly, it astounds me that in such a litigious country, members of the general public are allowed to just walk up to the lava outbreak.

After taking far too many photographs and saying to far too many complete strangers, "come and look at this!", it is time to head back across the lava flow to the relative safety of the car. It has been an immense privilege to have been in the presence of the primal forces of nature slowly building new land, as they have since the beginning of time.

However, it was slightly disturbing to see such an awesome process reduced to the status of a theme park, where families come to stare, say "wow, look at the lava", take a snapshot and go and have a hamburger.

In New Zealand we would have stuck up a big barrier, declared the whole area deeply unsafe, and told everyone to stay the hell away. I think we might have the right idea.

* Sarah Ell paid her own way to Hawaii.

The activity at the Hawaii Volcanoes National Park can be monitored here.