Volcano Trip!

A couple months ago I went on an excursion to the Volcano, Tungurahua, with a group from the South American Explorers Club (see link to the right, it's a great group in which to be involved as a traveler in South America; they have "clubhouses" in several South American cities.)

This volcano is active and has erupted several times this past summer. The last time it had erupted was the week before our trip! The material being ejected from the volcano is mostly ash and rock, there is no lava. In the time since I went on this trip, the volcano has again spewed ash and rocks...

Our trip leader was Dr. Theo, a geology Professor at the Univerdidad San Francisco, one of the private universities in Quito. Dr. Theo teaches some classes in English and some in Spanish. He is also quite a character: he was born in Germany, grew up in Greece, and teaches in Quito.

He speaks at least German, Greek, Spanish and English fluently and was joking in all the languages, sometimes simultaneously in a couple, ... an indicator of his fluency levels~! To the Right is a photo of Dr. Theo with the French geologist from a French organization which monitors all volcanos in the world.


One of the interesting things about this trip was that Dr. Theo did not just focus on the geology of the volcano and the surrounding areas, he highlighted the social involvement the scientists have had with the local communities during the last few years. This interaction was mostly to educate local leaders and communities so that they would develop emergency plans, warning systems and local refuges during eruption periods.

Several community leaders spoke to the group

about the progress they had made to implement new systems and to alert the towns´ populations about potential dangers. Dr. Theo pointed out a highway stretch to our group where 7 people had died because they didn´t believe warnings that exceedingly hot material (ashes, gases...? somehow I missed this particular point), would be a danger, particularly during late night hours. He considered this a major improvement over what the numbers of dead could have been...

An interesting scene presented itself when we first arrived at the foothills of the volcano... A music video in the making! I am not sure who the signer was, but he was giving an emotional appeal to the camera in front of an ashflow...