Since I have been here, I have seen several volcanoes and there have even been a couple of minor eruptions around the country- but until this weekend I hadn’t actually witnessed any, until now.
This past weekend I went to Legaspi to continue my SCUBA open water course and we were informed Friday night that Mt. Mayon was erupting. The news came from a trusted source, a former peace corps volunteer, geologist, volcanologist, expat retiree living in the neighborhood of a volcano he has studied a lot: Mayon. We all left the movie that we were at and rushed outside to get a good look from the town center. From where we were we could see small red sparks that would tumble down the side of the volcano and disappear after a few minutes.
An hour or so later, we were picked up by Chris & his wife Glenda (our news source on the eruption) and went to an observation center for Mayon on a hilltop in the city. From there we got to see the equipment that they use to monitor volcanic activity and got to talk and ask questions about Mt. Mayon and volcanoes in general. Several people had binoculars and there were a few telescopes set up so that we could get a closer look at the rockfall (the red sparks going down the slopes).
Less than a week before, Chris had noticed a large plume coming from Mayon on our way to class. While we were at the observation site, they upgraded the alert to level three. This doesn’t mean that we were in any danger, we were well outside of the 6k danger zone, but we were getting quite a nice show. There were no firework-like explosions, but those may be soon to come.
Here’s a picture of Mayon from the pier in Santo Domingo, sunday morning.
Here’s a closer view of the cone. Those “clouds” coming off the volcano are ash and dust from the rockfall.
I’m hoping by the time we go back for our next class there’ll be something spectacular to view, in the meantime I’m back at home and missing out on the action.