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Today we made the 1 hour drive from Hilo to the Hawaii Volcanoes State Park. The road gently inclines the whole way there until we hit 3500ft at the entrance.
We were lucky enough to arrive at the visitor centre just as a park ranger was about to begin a free 45-minute guided tour. So we tagged along and learned all about the volcano, the foliage and the Hawaiian mythology. We ended our tour overlooking the massive crater, but unable to see any of it due to the thick low mist. However, the weather changes so quickly up here that we were able to see 2 miles across to the other side about 10 minutes later.
We drove a short way down the Chain of Craters Road - stopping to walk through the Thurston Lava Tube. All along the road are places to stop to see craters or the remnants of recent lava flows. At one point the isolation is overwhelming - you round the bend and you're in a volcanic desert, so quiet that you could hear the proverbial pin drop.
We returned the visitor centre and drove a bit further around the crater rim road to the steam vents. They were a bit like Rotorua minus the smell and bubbling water, but certainly welcome to warm us up as the temperature dropped.
Our final stop on the road (the rest if it is closed due to sulphur emissions from the volcano) was the Jagger Centre - part museum and part viewpoint for the lava lake that sits beneath the surface of the crater within a crater. In the daytime, the lava lake is invisible as it is below the surface, but at night there's an eerie orange glow visible rising up the walls of the crater punctuated by the occasional overhanging rock falling in, breaking through the crust and sending up a fresh plume of volcanic fumes.
Unfortunately, there's no food sold in the park, so we left in the late evening with rumbling bellies and stopped at the nearby - and aptly-named - Volcano village for food. The mist was so thick that it seemed like we were in the village of the damned, but the food was tasty an reasonably priced.
As we drove back to the hotel, the mist soon dissipated and we had a relaxing 40-minutes return trip.
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