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American Morning
Next 'CNN TRAVEL NOW' Explores Hawaii
Aired May 18, 2001 - 09:34 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: It's time now for our weekly travel escape. Today, it's walking on a live volcano. Does that sound frightening? Well, it sounds crazy to me.
Senior producer Greg Phillips survived such a walk, and he's here to tell us all about his close encounter.
Good to see you.
GREG PHILLIPS, CNN PRODUCER: Good morning.
HARRIS: Glad to see you in one piece, and not one smoking piece.
PHILLIPS: It's a lot more frightening than it sounds. It's absolutely an incredible experience. You can do this in Hawaii. We went to the big island of Hawaii, which is one of my absolute favorite places on the planet. It's just spectacular.
The first way to see Hawaii Volcanoes National Park is, as I would recommend it, to do an aerial tour. As you're flying over the island, it's just incredible.
You can see right here the active lava flow going into the ocean. What's interesting about this, Leon, is that the lava flow is continuously changing, so sometimes it's flowing into the ocean, and other times, it's not. So you never know when you get there exactly where you're going to see the lava.
HARRIS: What I'd like to know really quickly is what does that sound like?
PHILLIPS: It's interesting, because one of the best things to do is actually to walk on the lava. So one of the things that we did -- you can actually drive through the park. Kilauea is actually the world's most active volcano.
HARRIS: I read that.
PHILLIPS: You can access it in many different ways.
You can see right here that there's a lot of steam that you can see.
Then, of course, here's some lava in the background. And there's lava actually covering the highway. What's interesting about it is that -- you can see -- it just flowed right over the highway and blocked a lot of the roads. This dates back to an eruption that started in 1983 and has been continuing ever since.
As you're walking on it, it sounds like broken glass.
HARRIS: No kidding.
PHILLIPS: And it crunches. It kind of looks like a brownie.
But then, of course, the great part about this is when you actually get to the hot lava, the molten stuff.
HARRIS: Tell us about the hot stuff. That's the stuff that makes the great pictures.
PHILLIPS: That's what you want to see. It's not as dangerous as you might think. When you hike out there, a lot of people ask if you can fall through, slip through the cracks. No, what happens -- when you discover it -- it's an amazing discovery: Your heart is beating; it's incredible -- is the intensity of the heat keeps you from ever getting too close.
HARRIS: OK.
PHILLIPS: One of the other things that you can do is actually hike to the ocean, because the lava flows into the ocean, as you saw from the aerials.
HARRIS: Right.
PHILLIPS: Here I'm scooping some lava.
HARRIS: You're kidding me. Are you crazy? You are crazy.
PHILLIPS: This is actually another member of my crew, Amy Morelly, and we were with a scientist who's in charge of the volcano observatory there. This is not something that we recommend anybody do.
HARRIS: This looks kind of dangerous.
PHILLIPS: Right, right. But he was with us and showed us how to do it. And again...
HARRIS: How hot was this? Wasn't it hot to walk on?
PHILLIPS: No. As you get close -- it's about 2,000 degrees when it comes to the surface of the Earth. But within a few minutes, it cools. As you can see right here, he's chipping it off. You can walk on it.
HARRIS: It didn't damage that little trowel, either.
PHILLIPS: No, no. It's amazing. HARRIS: Interesting.
What does it smell like?
PHILLIPS: It doesn't really have a smell. What I noticed is that when you get some of that vog -- it's the steam, the lava hitting the ocean -- you get this weird sort of metallic taste in the back of your throat.
But that's about the only bad part. A lot of it's very windy, hot conditions as you're walking out there.
HARRIS: Interesting -- it looks like the picture you have in you mind of fire and brimstone. You'd think it would smell like sulfur or something like that.
PHILLIPS: Parts of the park do smell like sulfur, but when you're out with the molten lava, it doesn't really have a smell. But it has a sound, that crackling sound.
It's absolutely incredible.
HARRIS: Greg Phillips, thanks much. I appreciate your explaining.
PHILLIPS: There's more of the show tomorrow, at 6:30 and 11:00, on "CNN TRAVEL NOW." We'll talk about walking on volcanoes and Hawaiian music, and we'll look at cowboy country on the big island.
HARRIS: Don't forget to let me know the next time you want to trade jobs.
PHILLIPS: Absolutely. We'll take you along.
HARRIS: Thanks. See you later.
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