Visiting Mt. Yasur: A Volcano in Vanuatu
- Rand Blimes
- Apr 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 28
You know how it feels when a marching band walks past you, and the percussion is thumping and you feel it in your chest? Well, standing on the edge of a volcano while it blasts lava high into the air is nothing like that. Nothing like that at all.
But how to describe it?
OK, it is like this. Imagine the difference between a two-year-old running across the room and jumping on you and being hit by a train. If the marching band is the two-year-old, the volcano is the train. A big one.
But even that analogy doesn't do it justice. If you want to understand, just try visiting Mt. Yasur on the island of Tanna in Vanuatu.
A Treehouse on Tanna
On the island of Tanna, I found a hotel that is the stuff of (my) dreams. It is a tree house. Not a fancy, upper crust, luxurious "tree house." This was an actual tree house. A real tree house. A "Hey! I could have made this thing myself with my dad" tree house. I got to stay in a tree house! If you want to find the place when you go to Vanuatu, just ask for "tree house blong (belong) Fred George" (the actual name of the place is the Tanna Tree Top Lodge).
The best thing about the tree house (other than the fact that it was a freakin' tree house!) was the small balcony with the view of Mt. Yasur, an active volcano a few kilometers away. As I sat there on the balcony of my tree house (!), every now and then I would see the volcano throw lava high into the air. A few seconds later, the sound of the eruption would roll through the valley, a deep, bass rumble that was a mere preview of what I would soon experience.
Visiting Mt. Yasur: Feeling the Power of Nature
The manager of the tree house, Fred George, took me and an Australian couple up a road that reached within a hundred meters or so of the rim of the volcano a bit before sunset. On the drive up, he explained that if the volcano hurled any large stones in our direction, we needed to make sure we didn't run in a straight line downhill to get away from the rock. "Just turn!" he proclaimed casually.
OK. Got it. If volcano tries to kill me by flinging a fiery boulder toward me, I should (stop screaming like a two-year-old and) turn.
Any other advice?
"Don't fall into the crater."
Got it. Now I know everything necessary to safely visit a hell mouth.
So we ascended, and I stood there on the edge of the crater looking down into the warm, crimson glow of an active volcano.
Every few minutes it erupted, and flaming, glowing earth shot up into the air. And I was prepared for that. It is what you expect at a live volcano. It was what I had come to see.
But the sound. Oh, the sound.
I had always thought that we can only hear with our ears, but is incorrect. It turns out you can hear with your whole being. I heard those eruptions in my ears, my chest, my soul. I think it knocked the wind out of me at one point, but I can't be sure because it also caused me to black out a little bit.
"Wow" is all I can say.
Every now and then it is good to remember just how powerful nature can be. And I feel truly lucky to have had this reminder given to me because travel.
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