Isabela Island, Sierra Negra Volcano
Puerto Villamil looks pretty quiet this morning…why? Maybe everyone is up on the volcano, maybe people have abandoned this island fearing the fury of God Vulcano, or maybe it is just too early for most of the inhabitants of this tiny fishing village. However, there is something that’s changing their daily routine. Now the world has its eyes on them, on this lovely place with a long white sandy beach at the base of an active volcano.
We board the pick-up trucks and head to the rim of Sierra Negra. Everyone wants to ride on the back, despite the dust, the bumpy road, the low branches in this narrow path. We have gotten a permit to get to the rim. We have an appointment with the eruption, and there is no time to loose. Once at 2800 feet high, we leave the pick-up trucks behind and start the walk to the very rim. It’s a little steep, and we are anxious to know if we’ll actually see the eruption or not. We find groups heading back already; they look radiant, shining with a special spark. I guess it’s the glow one only gets with the invigorating light of an erupting volcano. A guest asks me to inquire the leader of the other group about their encounter, what they saw, how it was, what to expect once we arrive there. I say that it’s better not to know, to be surprised by our own thoughts while we live through this new experience. Anyway, we are already there, there is here. We can hear it, and we can smell it. And we did see it! At the moment there was an opening through the guavas, we discovered the spouts of lava being ejected to the skies, from two different vents. One of the lava fountains was approximately 400 feet in height. There was a wide lava flow running into the floor of this second largest caldera in the world. There was a cloud of gases and water vapor reaching at least two miles into the blue skies. The guavas around the rim and inside the volcano had been burned when the winds blew south a few days ago. But the fair southern trade winds are taking most of the gases to the north east. Puerto Villamil is on Sierra Negra southern flanks, and we as well are standing on the southern edge of the volcano so we can enjoy the eruption with no fear or let’s say with the normal fear when one is faced with the power of nature.
We get as far as it’s aloud by the National Park Service, and once there, we sit down and watch. Sierra Negra, with or without an eruption, is already impressive. The wide caldera of approximately 5 by 7 miles in diameter is filled in by black and young lava. The summit of this volcano collapsed long ago, and the last eruptions have occurred along the rim. We can call these features parasitic eruptions, and the last one was in 1979.
Now this volcano has been erupting since October 22, when people celebrating a party in the highlands of Isabela experienced a small earthquake. Goat hunters felt it too; they were at the rim, left everything behind and ran down to town. The news also came from a boat anchored in Elizabeth bay: Sierra Negra was spouting a lava fountain nearly a thousand feet high. It was Saturday evening, and the Islander was a hundred miles away from the volcano, in Espanola. But even from there we could see a reddish horizon thanks to the energy of this magnificent eruption. Six days later the volcano is still sending molten rock into the sky and pouring rivers of lava into its caldera. It has lost some power, but still, it is Sierra Negra, erupting, in front of our human eyes. We are so little, but feel so huge now that we have witnessed one of the processes that shape planet Earth.
Puerto Villamil looks pretty quiet this morning…why? Maybe everyone is up on the volcano, maybe people have abandoned this island fearing the fury of God Vulcano, or maybe it is just too early for most of the inhabitants of this tiny fishing village. However, there is something that’s changing their daily routine. Now the world has its eyes on them, on this lovely place with a long white sandy beach at the base of an active volcano.
We board the pick-up trucks and head to the rim of Sierra Negra. Everyone wants to ride on the back, despite the dust, the bumpy road, the low branches in this narrow path. We have gotten a permit to get to the rim. We have an appointment with the eruption, and there is no time to loose. Once at 2800 feet high, we leave the pick-up trucks behind and start the walk to the very rim. It’s a little steep, and we are anxious to know if we’ll actually see the eruption or not. We find groups heading back already; they look radiant, shining with a special spark. I guess it’s the glow one only gets with the invigorating light of an erupting volcano. A guest asks me to inquire the leader of the other group about their encounter, what they saw, how it was, what to expect once we arrive there. I say that it’s better not to know, to be surprised by our own thoughts while we live through this new experience. Anyway, we are already there, there is here. We can hear it, and we can smell it. And we did see it! At the moment there was an opening through the guavas, we discovered the spouts of lava being ejected to the skies, from two different vents. One of the lava fountains was approximately 400 feet in height. There was a wide lava flow running into the floor of this second largest caldera in the world. There was a cloud of gases and water vapor reaching at least two miles into the blue skies. The guavas around the rim and inside the volcano had been burned when the winds blew south a few days ago. But the fair southern trade winds are taking most of the gases to the north east. Puerto Villamil is on Sierra Negra southern flanks, and we as well are standing on the southern edge of the volcano so we can enjoy the eruption with no fear or let’s say with the normal fear when one is faced with the power of nature.
We get as far as it’s aloud by the National Park Service, and once there, we sit down and watch. Sierra Negra, with or without an eruption, is already impressive. The wide caldera of approximately 5 by 7 miles in diameter is filled in by black and young lava. The summit of this volcano collapsed long ago, and the last eruptions have occurred along the rim. We can call these features parasitic eruptions, and the last one was in 1979.
Now this volcano has been erupting since October 22, when people celebrating a party in the highlands of Isabela experienced a small earthquake. Goat hunters felt it too; they were at the rim, left everything behind and ran down to town. The news also came from a boat anchored in Elizabeth bay: Sierra Negra was spouting a lava fountain nearly a thousand feet high. It was Saturday evening, and the Islander was a hundred miles away from the volcano, in Espanola. But even from there we could see a reddish horizon thanks to the energy of this magnificent eruption. Six days later the volcano is still sending molten rock into the sky and pouring rivers of lava into its caldera. It has lost some power, but still, it is Sierra Negra, erupting, in front of our human eyes. We are so little, but feel so huge now that we have witnessed one of the processes that shape planet Earth.
