Mt Yasur's ash-laden smoke has smothered the vegetation, reducing the landscape to an alien pre-historic desert, with the gaunt shapes of surviving pandanus palms adding to the surrealistic view. Along the path to the crater rim, there are whiffs of sulphur and whooshing, roaring noises. Ahead is the silhouette of people on the rim, golden fireworks behind them. Then you're looking into a dark central crater where three vents take turns to spit rockets of red-molten rock and smoke. The ground trembles and a fountain of fiery magma shoots up and spreads against the sky. All turns quiet, except for the thudding of boulders as big as trucks somersaulting down into the vast campfire.
Just when you're getting used to it, there's a gasp and a bang, the ground shakes, and lumps of red-hot magma shoot high overhead. Black smoke boils upwards in a dense column, lightening flashes inside the crater; the magma splashes the central vent and subsides again.
Some visitors find Yasur terrifying; it's definitely unforgettable.
Love it. I hope you got all your geologist friends some rock samples ;).
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