Hawaiian Lava Disaster

Date: 8/5/2018

My friend M and I had just landed on Hawaii’s newest island, south of the big island (my mind must have made this one up) for our vacation. I had been there before and it was picture perfect, but smaller and lower key than the other islands because it was so much smaller and newer. It was riskier as well because the volcano was still so young so most of the resorts were more like tent towns, which had a certain charm. It was so close to the big island that you could see it from the island’s north shore, creating an amazing channel with beautiful reef between the islands, and there were all kinds of water sports to do to go from one island to another. Anyway, right after we got to where we were staying, the sky grew very dark and ashy. We knew we must have come at the worst time, when the volcano was erupting. We walked around a bit and saw our worst nightmare - no one was around (the locals must have figured out and left,) as well as a river of lava flowing next to our resort and gaining on taking over our half of the island. I knew our only way to survive would be to escape to the big island using some kind of water sport vehicle on the north shore, but our goal was to escape to make sure we could still have a good vacation. 😂 Most of the locals apparently had the same idea because the only thing left was a small plane. Neither of us had flying experience but we had to try. In the cockpit there were instructions so I was able to figure out how to take off, but we were taking off into soot, so I had to climb pretty high in altitude to see. We got over halfway across the channel when the plane controls started freezing because we were too high, so we had to lower the plane and bail in the water and swim to shore. Once we got to shore, we went to the nearest resort and explained our situation, asking if we could stay there. They said no and suggested we just go home. The dream ended as we showed up to the airport to argue they let us get on a plane for home.