The first thing you need to know about Lava is that it comes in two major forms: hot and cold. (and you'd better always know exactly which one of these you are confronted with)

Besides this very important distinction, there are two main types of lava: A'a lava, shown in this image, and pahoehoe lava, shown in most of the images further down. I was told the difference comes from the amount of gas in the lava.

If it has a lot of gas in it, you get big, chunky lava, called a'a lava (because if you walk on cold a'a lava without really good shoes, it hurts). An a'a flow, if you can call it that, is slow moving. It's like a slow dam of hot rocks moving through the neighborhood. That dam is sometimes 10 meters high. People told me, that the outgassing of a'a is very loud and that you hear a constant rumbling and crackling if you get within a couple of hundred meters of an a'a flow.

This is what cold pahoehoe lava can look like. It has very little gas and it is much more liquid than a'a. Liquids have a tendency to flow much faster than rocks, right? The same is true with pahoehoe. Imagine running sirup.

Don't be deceived by that comparison, though. Pahoehoe lava can flow much faster as well! There are rivers of pahoehoe that can easily outrun a person or even a car. Underground lava flows, sometimes observable through a so-called skylight in a lava field, can flow at speeds of 60 miles an hour and more. One of the images further down will make that quite obvious.

Another important thing to know about the two lava types is that because of the difference in gas content you are likely to experience less dangerous gas near a pahoehow flow. But don't take my word for it! An active volcano is always a dangerous area to be in and you better have somebody with you who has a lot more experience with lava than I do!

When lava cools out, especially pahoehoe, it seems, you get many different colors, depending on the chemical composition of the lava. It can be like brown glass, silvery, black, greenish and many other tints. When you walk though a new lava field it is sometimes like walking through a world made of glass and you destroy something unique and fragile on every step you take...

Hawaii has incredibly clear air -- this is the reason why so many astonomical observatories are located on the saddle road between Mauna Kea and Mauna Loa. Not only are these observatories high up in cold air (less flicker in the air) but the air is also very clear and clean. As Hawaii is so isolated from all other centers of our oh-so-wonderful civilization, it has more or less only the pollution that is home-made in Hawaii.

I spent many hours on the lava walk at night. You would not believe how many stars you can see there and how beautiful the milky way is, when you can actually *see* it properly.

But let's look at another interesting place. Here we are hiking across Kalapana beach. Yes, beach. At least till about 10 years ago.

Kalapana was a beautiful bay,wonderful black sand, ideal for surfing, with a traditional Hawaiian village and a more modern village as well. But Ms. Pele reclaimed all of it and filled the entire bay with lava. Practically nothing remains.

In a few places you can see iron fence posts sticking out of the lava, in places where once was a garden. In some places you see weird impressions of fruit in the lava, where a tree burnt up in the lava flow and the fruit growing on the tree fell into the cooling lava. The fruit burnt up as well, but sometimes left a characteristic impression in the rock.

And if you follow the former highway over many of these interruptions you'll eventually end up here. Here even the bulldozed lava path stops. From here on you have to walk. Not to far after this spot the ground is still hot.

At night you see it glow here and there and during the day you can feel the heat come up through cracks in the lava surface. Some places are just warm, others are so hot you have to quickly cross them because the soles of your shoes start melting otherwise.

When you smell something funny it's very likely the rubber of your shoes starting to melt. Time to walk on. It's always good to have a bottle of water on you in this place.

a) to drink (it's hot and dry)
b) to cool off your shoes if they got too hot (but don't soak them, otherwise your toes get cooked on the next hot spot)
c) to test where it is hot. Just sprinkle a sip of water and you will hear where it's too hot to walk.

And in some places the lava is liquid. And you never know where hot lava might emerge. Quite rapidly a small flow could open up right behind you and block your path back. In this area you always have to watch out what's happening around you.Never go there alone! Always have somebody with you who knows more about the area then both you and I do ;)

Flows like these don't move all too fast -- this lava runs a bit like thick sirup. But you never know when a faster flow might open up. And the really fast flows can easily outrun you, and especially in this environment they can also easily outrun a car.

Erm - I should not need to mention this: Don't sit down anywhere here. Shoe soles are much better insulation than pants.

But not all is liquid and hot. There are also beautiful older lava formations to be found, like this one. Some of these are very brittle and when you step on them they splinter into glassy shards, others you can walk on.

This one was pretty solid. To give you an idea of scale: What you see here is about 2meters (6 feet) across.

We walked almost an hour across the lava field. It was a pretty strenuous walk because there is practically no level ground. And what appears solid might slide or splinter.

But in the end we reached the ocean and we got really really lucky and we got a very special treat, a special present from Ms. Pele...

We got to see something quite rare...

This is called "firehose lava".

I said above that lava flows can get very fast, like 50 miles per hour and more. Well, here is one of these that flowed underground till it reached the sea. Here it shoots out of the lava field and hits the ocean in a fiery arch.

That the place where the lava leaves the rock is shaped like a gorilla head makes this flow even more special.

Now, this photo was taken from about 100 meters (300 feet) away. The flow itself is probably a meter across, if not more.

Getting much closer could be dangerous. With very fast moving lava in the area you can never know if a new flow might open up right next to you. And you would have no chance outrunning this flow.

It's quite difficult to take photos of such a flow too, because the molten lava streams right into the ocean, which means you get a lot of steam. You have to wait for just the right moment, when the wind blows the steam away like in this picture. I shot out a whole film and got only 2-3 really good photos.

Too soon we had to walk back and leave Ms. Pele to herself.

Hawaii is a growing island. I forgot the exact numbers, but the island grows by a significant amout every year.

Some of the lava erodes quite fast. Although the Kalapana flow is less then 10 years old you see green poking out of the rock here and there already.

Note the red color under the top layer of this lava. These "red cinders", when ground up, are used for making running tracks, tennis courts and in some cases even roads (see the "red road" mentioned on one of the other pages).