Mount Yasur is one of the main reasons that tourists visit the island of Tanna. There are advertisements at the airport welcoming you to ‘the world’s most accessible volcano’.   So as soon as we arrived in Tanna, we asked Tom, our guest house owner, if he could arrange a tour. He wanted to take us up on that afternoon, but it started to rain and the trip was postponed.

The second day dawned bright and the trip was back on. Tom had to go to Villa, so a friend of his, Willi, was enlisted to drive us to Mount Yasur. He was accompanied by his son, Felix. We bonded over the fact that we both have sons called Felix. The drive was quite arduous, since Mount Yasur is on the other side of the island and most of the roads are unsurfaced. A bone rattling experience! However, the Chinese have arrived in Tanna and are in the middle of surfacing the main roads. The locals hope the new roads will encourage more tourists to come and help their economy grow.

To reach Mount Yasur, we drove right across the middle of the island, climbing up to the top of Mount Lonialu and stopping at the Lookout to admire the view.

Back down the other side and on until the road became a narrow, deeply rutted track surrounded by high banks of volcanic soil.  We bumped along here until the road ran out and we drove out onto  the Western ash plain, a black and desolate landscape edged by pinkish coloured rock formations – lava flow.

Above us loomed Mount Yasur, an ominous black triangle belching smoke. Willi took a wrong turn through the rocks and over a river to reach the volcano and we almost got stuck. Fortunately, we spotted another truck and followed it until we found the way through.

The landscape changed again as we came to the fertile Southern slopes of the volcano. I spotted a number of homestays and hostels. In 2015, Cyclone Pam flattened this area but a number of new places have sprung up since then or have been rebuilt.

Finally, we arrived at the Mount Yasur welcome area. A large visitor centre is being built and is almost complete.  I was surprised to see 40 or so people waiting for the tour. A hefty fee of around 9,750 VT a person is charged for a tour.

The tour started with a welcoming talk from one of the guides. This seemed to go on for some time, as everything was translated into French. In common with the other islands we’ve visited in Vanuatu, residents have the option of attending French or English taught schools. It is not unusual to find Ni-Vans who speak both English and French as well as Bislama, the national language and their own native language – on Tanna alone, 28 different local languages are spoken.  Apparently, the word ‘Yasur’ means ‘God’, since in the past, locals worshipped the volcano as a God.

One other useful fact I retained – the name ‘Tanna’ dates back to the time of Captain Cook. As Captain Cook sailed past Tanna at night, he spotted the glow of Mount Yasur. At daylight, he came ashore. There he met an old man and asked him what was the name of this land? As he asked him, he picked up a handful of earth and ran it through his fingers to indicate ‘land’. The old man replied ‘Tanna’ which means ‘earth’ in his local language. So Captain Cook gave the island the name ‘Tanna’ and it’s been known as Tanna ever since.

After the talk, a local group dressed in traditional costume performed a couple of traditional dances to welcome us.  I was interested to watch these, having seen the film ‘Tanna’ the night before we came here. It’s an amazingly beautiful film which captures traditional village life and customs in Tanna. The performance ended with the dancers presenting a flower necklace to each visitor.

The sun was going down and it was time to go up the mountain. We were loaded into four wheel drives and then made a hair-raisingly steep ascent on a rough unmade road. I was glad to climb out the car and follow our guide for the last ten minutes on foot.

Arriving at the rim of the crater, the sun was about to set. Below us, the craters bubbled and rumbled, emitting clouds of blue, sulphurous smoke. We climbed up to the West side of the crater where we had a good view of the vents which take turns to spit out balls of red hot magma and send them flying into the sky. It’s an exhilarating experience.

As the sun went down, the colours became more spectacular, the clouds of smoke glowing a deep red. It’s not particularly comfortable, as wind blows choking gases into your face and the ash goes into your eyes.

There are no safety rails or guide ropes to stop you slipping over the edge. It all adds to the feeling that you are in a dangerous, frightening place. According to our guide, there is a scale for volcanoes which runs from 1-5. This volcano is only at level 2. If it goes up to level 3, it is closed to visitors as it is considered too much of a risk. Mount Yasur hasn’t yet gone above a level 3.

The wind blew up and it started to rain. David and I were ill equipped for wet weather, in shorts and jumpers, and decided to come back down to the lower level and wait for the rest of the group behind the shelter of a wall.  By the time they came down, it was completely dark. We watched the points of their torches slowly wind down the hill to our left as ahead of us the volcano lit up the sky.