As the Mount Yasur volcano cracks like thunder, spewing molten rock and billowing clouds of ash, it sends a warm rush of air to tourists watching from its rim.
Amid the roars from the abyss, the hiss of steam, and the thud of large pieces of magma hitting the ashen dust on the other side of the vent, more visitors arrive to view the eruptions in the pre-dawn dark.
“I’ve been here many times, but I still get scared,” says a tour group leader, moving back from the unfenced rim overlooking the red-hot gash in the Earth’s crust in the South Pacific nation of Vanuatu.
PHOTO: AFP
The fear is understandable. The track to the crater’s edge is strewn with rocks tossed skyward by the volcanic eruptions — ranging from the size of house bricks to one as large as a car door which almost blocks the ashen path.
Kicking a dinner plate-sized piece of cooled lava that he estimates has landed in the last month, a guide points out that Yasur is not particularly active at the moment, rating only one on a scale that runs to four.
In May, visiting the crater was banned and the huge plume of volcanic ash, which fell over Tanna Island, clouding windscreens as people drove, disrupted international flights.
Since the intrepid Briton Captain James Cook first spotted its glow in 1774, thousands of tourists have visited the volcano which lies some 250km south of the capital Port Vila and within the Pacific “Ring of Fire,” known for its high seismic and volcanic activity.
One of the most accessible volcanoes on Earth, the 361m Mount Yasur is also nearly always active — its super-hot crater a warm glow seen from around the island.
Officials say no one has ever fallen into the molten pit, but acknowledge that at least two people have been killed by flying lava after venturing towards the more dangerous sites on the ashen mountain.
Another person, a resident of another part of Tanna island, died after he was hit in the leg by a piece of lava and bled to death after failing to seek medical help, the Vanuatu Tourism Office said.
The volcano has also been known to cause a tsunami and locals live with the constant nuisance of falling ash destroying the crops they need for their survival on the island, where most still live in traditional villages.
Many of the poor roads which link the island communities are cut into the volcanic ash, meaning heavy downpours can make travel impossible, while the ash mud also has the potential for landslides, which could bury villages.
However, the volcano, reached via a barren moonscape covered in ash and dotted with rocks of lava, also ensures that Tanna has some of the most fertile soil in the country and the island produces coffee, coconut and copra.
It is also the source of hard currency, as tourists come to see an island once famous for its cannibalism, which now boasts visitor-friendly traditional Vanuatu villages, where residents still wear grass skirts and subsist on coconuts, bananas and yams.
As dawn breaks on Mount Yasur, roosters are heard and surrounding peaks can be discerned, as can the surrounding sea.
“Before, the people believed the volcano was their god,” local guide Fred George explains, who has brought two foreign tourists to the crater’s edge for a dawn viewing. “I can say they worshiped it.”
In former times, a local practice was to push dry sticks into the lava to obtain fire for heat and cooking, with villagers saying: “Yasur, Yasur, we need the fire from you,” George said.
“It’s still important to us,” he says, but for reasons less sacred: The mountain brings hundreds of tourists to Tanna Island each year, each of whom pays 2,250 Vatu (US$22) to view the volcanic eruptions.
“Without the volcano ... no money,” George says.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to