2017-05-07 Day 21



I have not been so close to an active volcano before. All the big trees are dead. A lot still standing. We assume the volcano killed them when it erupted in 2009 but they didn't burn so not sure the exact cause.

We got to the crater edge and the Plug was about 1km in front of us steaming away. Fascinating. John was waiting for a platoon of Orcs to march around the corner.

We had problems with depth of field with the mud in the bottom and the distance to the "plug". In this photo john is standing 1K from the plug and about 100m above the valley of mud. It is quiet deceiving. The air was cold and crisply clear which may have been the cause as well as the like colors.

We would have stayed a bit longer but the wind was chilling our fingers quite a bit. Hard walk down for my knees.
We drove all of another 30k’s to El Amarillo to find the hot springs. Drove past to find the second lot but they didn’t seem to exist. Camped beside a very active river. Raining gently again.