Great trip, knowledgeable guides

Posted on: 2017/04/25

We had kind of an unusual situation, as our hike down to the lava in the afternoon was canceled due to the directions of the winds, which were blowing toxic VOG inland. Instead, we ended up going to the crater for the second time that day, which actually turned out to be pretty cool, as the lava level had risen quite high.

Our AM guide was Angelique, who was really sweet and had a great deal of information about the flora/fauna in the area as well as having some really fun stories about Captain Cook and various other historical figures. She's clearly done her homework!

Campbell was our PM guide, and he's quite a character. He had a lot of great information to share about the various eruptions that have happened on the island and took us to a few places to see old lava flows. He's pretty new to the island and the tour, though, and it does sometimes show. I'd say, after he gets a little more experience under his belt, he'll be great. He's done quite a bit of research on his own, so he did have some good information debunking some common misconceptions on the origin of various species on the island.

We were pretty disappointed that our hike out to see the lava flow was canceled, but the owner was really great to work with, and let us jump into the hike the following day so we got to see it anyway! For that trip, Shawn was our guide, and he's a very experienced guide and seems to know every single person on the island, and shared some fun local trivia with us :). Sadly, the lava wasn't flowing as strongly as it had been in previous weeks so we saw more spurts than flows, but it was still REALLY cool.

The hike down wasn't as strenuous as I was expecting, they've actually bulldozed the road so it's more like a gravel road than hiking across lava as I was (for some reason) expecting, and there weren't any inclines/declines. They are able to park further into the park than the public, though, the hike was cut down to a 3 mile hike round trip.