Hot Stuff: Check Out Hawaii's Volcanoes

"Have people ever been boiled alive out here?" my hiking companion asks. "I mean . . . recently?"

It's an interesting question and, frankly, one I've been silently pondering for the past hour. While most vacationers to Hawaii spend their days smoothing on the cocoa butter and splashing around the swim-up bar, my wife and I have been crunching across fields of the black and brittle aa lava that forms the skin of this formerly molten lake. And I daresay we're having a better time than the beachcombers.

If you need proof that Mother Earth is a work in progress, it's here -- nearly 4,000 feet above the black-sand beaches of the Big Island, at Hawaii Volcanoes National Park [1]. On our drive up from sea level, we quickly transitioned from a land of candy-colored hotels and giggling honeymooners to a landscape pocked with hissing steam vents, sulfur springs, and fractured fault lines that seemed very capable of quickly opening wide and swallowing us up.

The park's western end is anchored by 13,677-foot Mauna Loa. Measured from its base on the ocean floor (add another 16,000 feet or so), it's the most massive volcano on Earth. But the real crowd pleaser is the Kilauea caldera, where we're hiking. It's the world's most active volcano and, according to legend, the home of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of volcanoes. I don't doubt it. Only yesterday, we watched an orange-hot stream of lava spew into the ocean. A sunfreckled couple inched closer to the liquid rock for a better photo, their Ray-Bans fogging from the lava's blazing heat. Way too close, I thought, although a nearby park ranger, crisply dressed in a gray uniform and flat-brimmed hat, assured me that "we haven't lost one yet."

The night before, I had stayed up late reading Mark Twain's Letters from Hawaii. The young and peripatetic Twain visited these very acres (then called the Sandwich Islands) as a reporter for the Sacramento Daily Union in 1866. Not far from here, he and his companions returned "half cooked" from a night hike that included a steady display from lava fountains that "boiled, and coughed, and spluttered, and discharged sprays of stringy red fire."

The eruptions have subsided since Twain's nocturnal jaunt, but the allure hasn't. We took off early in the morning, filled with enthusiasm and hot coffee, to explore the Kilauea Iki Trail, a four-mile loop. The trail quickly descends 400 feet through a rain forest alive with the flittering and finchlike Hawaiian honeycreeper, the nene goose, and hundreds of red-and-black Kamehameha butterflies. In a few moments, we're on the solidified lava lake. Sturdy hiking boots are a must. While photos of lava (particularly the seemingly sensual pahoehoe) make it look as silken as melted chocolate, it's rough stuff. Don't even think of wearing flip-flops, unless you want to be carried out.

Fact is, we didn't make it very far on the trail. While this stunning landscape is gorgeous to the eye, it can be a challenge to the respiratory system. The steam vents produce a fair share of sulfur gas, especially if you're downwind. Covering your nose and mouth with scarves provides some relief, but after about a mile we turned back. (We were, after all, technically still on vacation.) Instead, we took the car on the 11-mile Crater Rim Drive.

In the afternoon, we returned to our room at the Volcano House, an old-style country lodge on the lip of the caldera, and the oldest hotel in Hawaii. The rooms are spare but comfortable, filled with furniture made of native koa wood and enlivened with a soft pink-and-gray color scheme that subliminally hints at the fire and brimstone surrounding your pleasant cocoon.

After a month on the islands, Twain wrote that he "never bade any place good-bye so regretfully." After a day at Kilauea, you'll see that these beautiful islands also have a ferocious side that makes their beauty all the more exquisite.