After a rather lengthy time to process payment by all of us, credit card not accepted and not enough change at first, just one van to make two trips to get us all to their office, getting the transport arranged and finally time to source some bananas followed by a puncture in one of the 3 vehicles. Running so late now I feared that we would miss the sunset as I was expecting a 2 hour walk up the Telica volcano.

Leaving the tarseal road and onto the dirt road ... rather at times deeply rutted single lane dirt oxen track that only a 4 x 4 can drive over took a very long hour to get to the base of the volcano. We bounced around like anything. I was fortunate enough to have a front facing rear seat with garb handle in the new Toyoto Hi Lux along with 2 others. All the others were in 2 old Toyoto Landcruiser sitting on 2 lengthwise facing each other bench seats. The tour company actually wanted 10 of us in each van - 5 on each bench seat. It would have been fine if we were midgets.

Instead of the anticipated 2 hours, it was less than 30 minutes scrambling over the loose scoria to reach the point where sunset is observed. We had plenty of time and I was expecting a non-event due to the distant cloud clover but again was proven wrong. Am glad that I had my tripod as I had locked my camera to ISO 100, exposure compensate varying them from - 1 to -1/3 and away I clicked.

Time to eat the filled baguette etc before the short level 10 minute walk to the edge of the crater.

One could smell the sulphur and certainly hear the volcano well before we saw the edge of the crater rim. It sounded like a non stop muffled jet engine.

By now it was dark and we were told it is best to lie down at the edge of the crater rim and look down to see the red hot lava.

I set up the tripod and slung the camera neck strap over my head just in case!

I don’t like standing on edges (of anything) anymore so gingerly somehow took only 7 images starting off at 30 secs.

My photos does not show how far virtually below us at the bottom the active red lava was coming out of the crater. I have a 200 mm lens and it was fully extended. Apparently it was over 100 metres below.