Entries about eruption

We were heading to Montserrat.

Island in the distance

Approaching Montserrat - all looks calm

black sand beaches

Inhabited part of Montserrat

Beach/shoreline

House among the trees

Cliff edge

Abandoned Sugar mill

Remains of a sugar mill

Looking down on a destroyed village

Black sand beach from the helicopter

We were over the old airport by 1020.

Defunct Bramble Airport

Exclusion zone

Bob looking out the window

The pilot was saying that he was going to take us over to the old capitol but then he said - Hey there's a pyroclastic flow that is fresh. I took a short video of it

Pyroclastic flow coming down the mountain

coming down the mountain

Pyroclastic Flow coming down the mountain

It was coming down and turning the sea water to steam

Steam at the edge of the sea from the sea side

Pyroclastic flow boiling the ocean

Another picture of the steam

Flow from farther away

Ocean water turning to steam

Water turning to steam along the beach

Steam at the edge of the beach

Clouds of ash, smoke; steam from pyroclastic flow

Smoke rising from burning buildings

The buildings that had been there were burning and marked by smoke plumes. So we couldn't get over to the old capitol because of ash in the air. We couldn't see the top of the volcano because it was in a cloud, and we didn't see any red lava or anything - it was all grey.

Lava River

But the flow of ash was very dramatic and we got some good pictures. The pilot tried a couple of ways to get over to the old capitol but was blocked each time by dust clouds.

Ash clouds

Mountain with clouds of ash

By 1050 we were on our way back to Antigua


and we were back on the ground by 1100

I bought the DVD that they had of the history of the eruptions.

DVD holder

DVD

By 1120 we were walking back down the dock to the ship. They had divers working on the props

and they were painting the ship in places too. We went to our cabin and rested up and I downloaded the photos.

About 1400, we walked back to the stern and went out on our deck and took some photos of the town of St. John from that vantage point

Huge catamaran at the dock - Antigua and Barbuda

and then went to lunch. I got some pizza and an Italian wrap thing which proved to have capers in it. I don't like capers, so I picked them out.

We went to trivia which was a Visual Trivia and this time was vocabulary where they gave you a word and three definitions and we were to decide the correct one. The first two words (Twee and Tomalley) were pretty easy. We also got the correct definitions for those two and Kecking and Cretinze. Cretinze means to make into a dwarf, which I'm not sure how to actually DO that

But we missed Jehu (reckless driver) and Fadge, and I thought that Curpin meant one thing but the person doing the writing put down something else. Then I insisted that Ranivorous meant someone who ate frogs, and I was right. So we ended up with 6 right out of 10. Three of the groups had 6 right. So they gave us a tie-breaker and unfortunately it was a true false question. I decided, based on the fact that it was a long detailed question that it had to be true, and two of the groups had true as the answer. Since he didn't have another tie-breaker, he gave us both the prize which was luggage tags.

For dinner, Bob and I both had shrimp cocktail (he had two) and cauliflower soup, and then I had Shrimp Scampi which this time had carrot flan. I don't care for the vegetable flans, but I did like the crunchy carrot curls on the top. Bob, of course, had salmon. He had apple pie for dessert, and I had the marbled cheesecake.