Timanfaya National Park

As we drove into the park and around some of the volcanoes, it looked like a Mars landscape.  With such little rainfall, the vegetation has still not recovered from the last eruptions.  Before getting off the bus, they cautioned us not to try to walk off on our own, or to walk on areas not designated as paths.

At the top of one of the volcanoes, they had three experiments for us.

The first experiment was to stand and they would hand you some lava pebbles.  They seemed like such innocuous little red and black pebbles, but they were very hot!  If you tossed them back and forth a bit, you could wait for them to cool and keep them.  Connor kept his.  I did not.

The second experiment was placing straw into an open pit.  The pit is just shallow hole dug into the ground at the top.  There is nothing lit - it just looks like a hole in the ground, but the straw catches fire because of the heat of the volcano.

The final experiment is pouring water into a hole in the volcano.  The resulting geyser doesn't result in big rain drops as it mostly all steams away, though you do feel a small spray from the water.