Ambrym's Vanishing Lava Lakes

Ambrym: island of tree ferns and strange magic, held a secret within its jungle folds, a natural wonder so rare, that few have seen one first-hand. All of Vanuatu's islands are volcanic, but Ambrym, with a caldera—a giant crater more than twelve kilometres wide—was special. The caldera had at its heart, five craters of its own, and in three of these, permanent cauldrons of lava seethed restlessly. These were Ambrym's secret lava lakes.

I had travelled fourteen thousand kilometres to get to Ambrym, an island that was in every sense as far removed from England, as it was possible to get. In Lalinda village, where we spent our first night as guests of the Chief, the company was welcoming and playful, the humidity stifling, malaria endemic, and badly needed sleep almost impossible. The following day was spent trekking up into the caldera, aided by a host of tribesmen, and a pack of gaunt dogs that ambled at our feet.

That evening we camped by a confluence of water-worn channels, carved into the soft ash by a seemingly endless rain of sulphuric acid. Everything, including my sleeping bag, was soon uncomfortably damp and some of my clothing began to dissolve in the acrid air. Sulphur dioxide and other poisonous gases wheeled from the craters, and fine ash tinged the clouds. In the night, a dull orange glow reflected from the steaming columns that held the thunderstorms above. It was another uncomfortable, sleepless night. But I had come to see Ambrym's lava lakes, three out of only a handful to be found anywhere, and all of them were in equally remote, uncomfortable places.

Mbuelesu seemed more like an open-cast mine than a volcano. Like a suckling babe, it hugged the side of Marum—Ambrym's largest crater—fringed by a sweeping filigree of deep gullies and moss-covered lava. Dense, suffocating steam poured from its gaping mouth, making it impossible to see anything, let alone to the crater floor hundred of metres below. It had been much the same standing at the edge of Mbuelesu's sister crater—Mbuelesu Taten. All we could see was an eye-watering wall of fog, and to make matters worse, the rain that had pinned us in our tents for most of previous day had begun to fall again. One blustery squall after another rattled in, seemingly from nowhere. Over the ocean the water shimmered in afternoon sun while, above us, acid fell from Ambrym's own volcanic weather.

Miniature funnels of spinning hot gas ripped along the crater's edge, flinging waves of vapour into my face. Unfortunately my gas mask was next to useless because it kept steaming up. A wet T-shirt stuffed down my throat was little better, and as the air cleared, I spat acid from my mouth.

John—companion, guide, self-taught volcanologist, and an expert on Ambrym's lava lakes—sat perched on the lip of the crater, writing notes. He stared into the abyss, trance-like, thoughtful, but somehow troubled, as though something was not quite as it ought to be. He called to me as I walked over to join him. "There's a problem" he said calmly. He glanced back into the crater. The steam had suddenly parted and for the first time we could see completely to the bottom. This was what I'd been waiting for, what I had come halfway around the world to see. All the money, the effort, the jetlag, the sleepless nights: the whole acidic, corrosive place. It was all going to be worth it. Excitedly I flicked my eyes from one steaming point to another imagining that at any moment I would catch my first glimpse of bubbling, molten lava. But all I saw was sulphur-stained fumaroles, and ink-like splashes of all too solid, black rock. I looked back at John in utter disbelief, my stomach and hopes had suddenly been flung into free-fall, as surely as if I'd been flung from the precipice itself. The look on John's face said it all—Ambrym's lava lakes were meant to be permanent, but inexplicably and for me, cruelly, they had vanished.