Big Island Hilo

Hilo is at the bottom of the string of islands that make up Hawai'i, which makes it the youngest and most rambunctious of the islands. It is the only one with currently active volcanoes--five of them, although Kilauea is the only one that has done any erupting in recent years. Mauna Loa is a huge mountain, the largest volcano on earth. It is 13,796 feet high (not counting the part below sea level). It hasn't erupted since 1984. Mauna Kea is the other huge mountain. Kilauea has been erupting frequently in recent times, including not long before we got there. We had only part of a day at Hilo so I did not get to see a lot of the area. But I did get a sense of the diversity of terrain. Oh, and incidentally, the volcanoes are busy creating a new island, about 20 miles off the SE coast of the Big Island. It is called Lo'ihi and it's still 3,200 feat below the surface of the ocean. It will be another 100,000 years or more before it pokes up out of the water.

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$Eruptions at Kilauea are usually not big explosions, but slow escapes of gas and oozing lava along the belt of fractured rock called the rift zone. That isn't to say they can't be destructive; whole villages, beautiful beaches, historic landmarks, have been engulfed by lava. But paradoxically these lava flows are creating new bits of our planet, too. Where else in the world can you say you've been present for something like THAT?$