Me, Martha, and Kevin on the rim of the volcano. Martha, Kevin, and Amanda find their way along the floor of the crater. Martha, Kevin, and Amanda at the Owia Salt Ponds.

"La Soufriere" 9/23/2002 This past weekend I headed up to the northern part of the windward side (my side) of St. Vincent. Most of the northern end of the island is taken up by a volcano named La Soufriere. It is big and scary. It last erupted in 1979, and since then it has been forming a big dome in the middle of the old crater. When you get to the rim, you are looking straight down 500 to 600 foot cliffs. It is very cool up there due to the gusty wind. I was a little reluctant to get too close to the edge. The hike up took us about 3 hours, and left us with enough time to go down into the crater. On the western wall of the crater there are some ropes built into an area that isn't as steep as the rest of the rim. You could probably butt-slide down without the ropes, but if you biffed it... Other than the dome, the crater floor is almost perfectly flat. Before the last eruption the whole floor was covered by a lake. Now there is only a small pond on the south east side. There are also some Sulfur vents in the dome. I made sure to get some crystallized Sulfur for my rock collection back home. The trip down was great; we even found some ripened bananas to snack on. The next day, Kevin took us to the Owia Salt Ponds. Kevin lives in a town called Sandy Bay, only a 45 minute walk away from Owia. Kevin has been here for a year, and has been doing health education in the area. He has done a lot of exploring and knows all the great places to go. We got lucky and a "goat truck" gave us a ride to Owia. The salt ponds are great except for the sea urchins. They are everywhere. One belly flop into the wrong pond and you would have a great story for all your new friends in hospital. Today we are having a "snow day". Tropical storm Lili is heading this way. All the schools are cancelled, and everyone is at home preparing. I am kind of excited seeing as this will be my first tropical storm. I sort of hope that it doesn't do anything boring like head north and totally miss us. We'll see if I still feel the same way later.