Standing up on the crater lip, about four to five thousand feet above the hot, sulfurous lake, I was trying to catch as many pictures as I could. The wind was howling around me.

What struck me as odd was a loud hissing noise I could hear. My first reaction was that it was the sound of wind splitting thru some cracks in the mountains creating a corridor effect. But the hissing part did not match with the howling or whistling that I would expect.

I explained my perplexity to Gabriel. He solved it for me.

Way down below – see if you can see the marked red areas – the pictures do not do justice to what the eyes could see – you can see steaming hot sulfurous vapors escaping from a gap in the wall just above the water level. That is the raw heat and furor from the lava layer escaping into the free air!!!

Impressive to even realize the scale!!