Neighborhood Volcanic Action

After only two weeks of being here, our local volcano, Piton de la Fournaise, began erupting. Laure, a friend from work, called me immediately to take an evening hike to see the lava flows by dark. That afternoon I headed south with three other German assistants and met up with Laure and her friend Adelaide in Petite-Ile. Laure lives in an incredible old mountain tree-house type place, perched on top of a ten-mile vertical winding incline. Needless to say, everyone was carsick by the time we arrived. We did manage to recover in time for a decadent Creole dinner of Rougail de Saucisses followed by an immediate food coma.

By the time we finished dinner, it was 10:30 pm and the moment had arrived to see this lava we'd been hearing so much about. What we hadn't anticipated was another hour and a half of driving à la NASCAR through steep mountain passes. Carsickness again, but this time we were filled up on sausage and in two separate cars. Upon arrival at the entrance of the national park, the others were nowhere to be found. By 1AM we had been waiting nearly an hour and were becoming concerned that a tragedy had befallen our friends; no one had cell phones. Finally we decided that we had no choice but to descend the mountain and find the corpses ourselves. After 45 minutes of more nauseating driving, we finally received word that the others were already climbing towards the volcano and where were we!!? Back up the mountain again.

Long story short, a major fight erupted between Laure, Adelaide, and the Germans when we finally reunited. Large and in charge women were screaming at each other in French and German about responsibility and friendship. As the lone Anglophone who didn't care about anything except seeing the lava, I was literally left to twiddle my thumbs and gaze at the stars while the others duked it out. We lost Adelaide who stormed off in a huff, leaving 5 of us freezing cold at 2AM to begin the hike inwards towards the volcano.

To say that Laure underplayed the rigor of the hike would be an understatement. What we had all pictured would be a 10 minute walk under the stars was a 2.5 hour hike over centuries old hills of hardened molten lava. We had head lamps, but the going was arduous to say the least. The one thing motivating me was the red aura that we could see from a distance. Every few minutes we were hit by a blast of warm air and we could tell we were getting closer. We arrived at 4:30AM at a most astounding scenic overlook of the volcano. In reality, we were about a mile from the eruption, but it felt much closer. Lava exploding into the air, an orange red train flowing down into the unknown. Maybe it was the emotion of fatigue, but at that instant, I felt that I had never seen anything so enormously impressive. We stayed fixed on the sight until we were all too cold to stand still any longer, and thus began the long trek back to the car. The sun was coming up as we finally got back to the parking lot at 7AM. Exhausted but moved to the core.

Piton de la Fournaise is one of the world's most active volcanoes and emits some of the most lava. It erupts every year--some years more significantly than others. This was a "moderate" eruption with lava projections of up to 65 feet in the air. Reunion's volcano sits within a protective crater, so in a moderate year like this, the lava did not flow out of the natural barrier. As recently as 2007, it is known to flow up, over, and down into the surrounding hillsides--sometimes into the ocean as well. No one lives in these hazard zones, so the volcano is typically viewed as an exciting wild card of nature, more so than an impending disaster. The picture below is of the lava trails from 2007; the rocks are still hot and smoldering!