Hungry Tigah

We made it on the plane!!!!

It's day three and we're sitting waiting for breakfast at a nice cafe. Still no Internet but its the first time I'm sitting down without something gorgeous to look at. This trip has been nuts. Our first day we missed our flight because Sam brought his Swiss army knife and so we had to check his bag in order to bring it with us. Because of that we had to wait for the next flight. We watched a beautiful sunrise out the windows. We landed safely and rented the most sexy luxurious pimp ass jeep ever. It was black and sleek for the first day at least.

praying that I actually reserved a car!

Sam's first visit to Walmart, and our sexy jeep

First up, we headed straight for the lava. Volcano national park was free to enter thanks to the public holiday. Always ask the oldest and wisest, the old man in the visitor centre may have talked our ears off, but he knew his way around. Our first hike for the trip was a loop around and through a cooling lava lake. Taking old mates advice we started the trail from the end, taking the reverse route. Starting on the high ground with a great look at what was to come, we followed the trail for the first few clicks. The first junction we met, we headed straight down the wrong path. Wrong turns always manage to lead to the best experiences. We took a much wider loop through the ash covered bush.
Anna found a whole in the ground which was previously a tree that died after being half buried under the volcanic ash. We had stumbled into a gap in the vog which, since we had taken the much longer detour, allowed us to see the steam thrown up by the largest of the current vents.

Anna now... Sam took this awesome panoramic picture of me with the vent in the background. It was upsetting to learn that we wouldn't be seeing any real live lava, but what we witnessed was amazing. Walking across a "lava lake" that was still cooling with tons of little vents all over the place was unrealistic. Putting your hand in the steam was even stranger because it was so hot! We took another retarted detour straight up the mountain and ended up in the middle of the jungle with what seemed as no safe way out. Luckily we could hear cars off in the distance and made it back out to the road safely... Eventually. After that, we did a trek through a lava tube. And then we made our way down chain of craters road and I made Sam get in a crater along the side of the road. We drove through super thick vog. Which was super scary by the way. We made it to the ocean and the end of the road because the 2003 lava flow gobbled it up! So cool. We watched the sun go down and then headed to camp, in the rain, for the night. Good times.