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As a young kid I remember meeting a family from Oregon who were traveling across North America on their vacation and they were carrying a fascinating cargo (ok, it was fascinating to me); a strange grey coloured, heavy, soot-like mixture. I remembered hearing that Mount St. Helen‘s erupted in May of that year but I hadn’t met anyone who ‘experienced’ it. Noticing my awe, the dad grabbed a baby food jar, scooped up some of the residue, handed it to me, and I went home with my very own bottle of volcanic ash. To this day it sits on the fireplace mantel at the cottage.

So, we thought it would be great to ask the global Flight Centre staff to recommend destinations where the topic of volcanoes is explosive; literally!

Mt. Etna, Italy

Located on the eastern side of Sicily, Mt. Etna remains the largest active volcano in all of Europe. Etna’s activity was recorded as early as the first century BC and it’s estimated that Etna’s eruptions started about a half million years ago on the sea floor. Etna is in a constant state of change and has tremendous eruptions every couple of years or so making it one of the most dynamic (and some would say living) volcanoes in the world. Etna is so potentially destructive and close to populations that in the 1990s it was designated a Decade Volcano. The purpose of the designation was to enable teams to study Etna for its threat as an impending natural disaster.  If you like hiking, the area has many routes with varying difficulties and it is said that the views are sensational. People who have been to Etna have often questioned ‘is this the day?’

Kilauea, Hawai’i

Kilauea means spewing or spreading and it remains one of, if not the most, active volcano in the world. Kilauea makes up part of the Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park and there are a number of hiking trails including day hikes and backcountry. It is very important to note any visitor alerts as these are issued when there is a presence of potentially harmful gases and other hazards from existing and new vents. Locals have long believed that Kilauea is the home of Pele, the goddess of volcanoes, and that when she erupts and spews her molten lava it’s because of Pele’s fierce anger.

Another memory from my childhood was listening to my grandfather, a well traveled man, telling me stories about visiting Hawai’i and watching the hot lava hit the water in a spectacular fashion… I imagine it to look just like the picture above.

So what explosive volcanic sites have you been to and how dangerous did it feel? We can feature them in an upcoming blog post.

We have highlighted Kilauea, Hawaii on the Flight Centre travel map.

Categories: Destinations

This entry was posted on Monday, April 20th, 2009 at 5:41 pm and is filed under Destinations. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.