Halema'uma'u is an amazing place which should inspire reverence in everyone. The presence of the Hawaiian fire goddess Pele is palpable here; the works of man are utterly dwarfed. The statistics of the mighty crater are just as impressive as the rich mythologies. The caldera of Kilauea is so big, you don't actually realise that you're inside it! In the first quarter of the last century there was a churning lake of lava here, but eventually it drained away back into the volcano. This allowed groundwater to do likewise and the inevitable result was in the form of titanic explosions of superheated steam which scattered debris for miles around. 
It is still everywhere to be seen. With the withdrawal of the lava, the crater collapsed inward to a depth of 400 metres and a diameter of one and a half kilometres. Subsequent activity on the crater floor, which is still going on as you can see, filled the floor to its present depth of nearly 90m.The presence of sulphur is everywhere, from the bright yellow deposits that cover the walls of the crater to the droplets of dilute Sulphuric Acid (Whoa!!) that were falling out of a clear sky. Halema'uma'u itself is within the even more enormous Kilauea caldera, and there are other craters in the area, most famous of which is Kilauea Iki. The word Kilauea means "much spewing out" which is the most appropriate name for it I can imagine; and Iki means "little". 
There was nothing little about the activity here in November 1959 when a vent appeared in the crater walls, sending fountains of lava over 1000 feet into the air. Just imagine coming across this on the Chain of Craters Road! This photograph was taken on the morning of the 14th and by the evening the road was nearly 100 feet deep in pumice. There were other episodes in the same year which together erupted some one hundred million cubic metres of lava into the crater. Parts of the floor are still steaming today, nearly fifty years later. You can hike across it - this is a definite priority for my next visit!
Actually I did encounter one crisis here, but it had nothing to do with eruptions. I had been snapping away at everything and realised that I was about to run out of film. Luckily the Jaggar Museum was close by, and they happened to sell just the sort of film I needed. We all piled back into the coach and took off for the Halema'uma'u overlook. Right on the lip of the crater, the map said "Hazardous Volcanic fumes". This is where we took our quick sulphur shower - and one of the party found a small hole in the ground. As it was about the size of a finger, he put his finger in it. He took his finger out of it at a much greater speed and exclaimed something in a language which I'm pretty sure wasn't Hawaiian. Part of the overlook was sectioned off, as it is accessible only to native Hawaiians to perform religious acts. There was still a bright red lehua (hibiscus to you foreigners) flower here, and somehow this said everything to me. With a reverential bow to mother Pele, I left.
The climate on the caldera is basically desert. The sky was cloudless and the temperature probably in the 30's - you have to remember that Americans still use non-metric measurements, so apologies for any shuffling between measurement systems! But our next destination was rather more familiar; well, there were trees at any rate. This was the rainforest at the Eastern end of Kilauea Iki, 
though I'm sure they don't get much rain up here. After the sunburned exposure at Halemaumau, some green shade was welcome, and it didn't get much greener or shadier than this during the whole week. The photograph here gives some idea of the greenness of the place, though it should be borne in mind that because of the warped shutter from earlier experiences, the left-hand side of the picture is darker than it should be! Everywhere there were enormous spreading tree ferns, and it did not seem totally beyond possibility that at any moment, T.Rex or one of his relatives would burst through the fronds. And, as they keep telling you in all those wildlife documentaries, rainforests are indeed dark, although this wasn't a rainforest in the Central American or 'Amazonian' tradition. For one thing, the volcanic soils here must be much more fertile than those of the new world. Indeed, the richness of volcanic soils is why so many people still farm on the slopes of volcanoes all over the world, despite the dangers. There are lots of coffee plantations in Costa Rica, for example, and that's littered with volcanoes. The winding path led also to a lava tube, formed when lava flows travel underground. On the ceiling, tree roots poked through and there were puddles on the floor.
We emerged into rainforest again, where the path climbed up and back toward the waiting transport. The visit had at last come to an end, though I for one could have spent weeks here which is, gentle reader, my eventual aim. Maybe next year this part of the site will have to be regarded as a separate entity, assuming of course that my camera equipment is up to the challenge!
