Take this tour: real HOT steaming fissures, the smell of sulphur, real recent lava flows, real accounts from live actual residents about the 2018 volcano eruption and their personal photos! This is THE tour to feel the true power and devastation of a volcano and how it impacts peoples’ lives!
We had no idea this tour existed until, by chance, New Way Horizon Travel offered a free shuttle to the Hilo Farmer’s Market from the cruise ship port to the farmers’ market and I asked about the 2018 eruption event - we are sooo glad we did! This is no doubt the real volcano experience people want but never knew still exists.
A few other big kudos: 1. Price-wise the tour is on par with other half day excursions BUT a significant portion of the $ goes towards the residences devastated by the eruption to help rebuild and recover. 2. Our tour guide, Brent, was in a word AWESOME - he was the same person who shuttled us from the ship, simply informed without the hard sell, even went out of his way and provided a lift to and from a local restaurant back to the ship after the tour (since the tour spanned lunchtime) - first class all the way!
I’m sort of annoyed that our cruise company had NO information on this tour nor had anything close to equivalent. This NEEDS to be on anyone’s itinerary who wants to experience true, live volcanic activity and not just some dry narrative and grainy pictures about stuff that happened decades ago.
Obviously this type of tour is hard to scale so, should this review result in a massive amount of interest, my apologies but, given the important stories that need to be told, that’s a good problem to have :).
