One of the few volcanoes on Earth you can stand on the rim of and watch erupt, which it does several times an hour and has done more or less continuously for several hundred years. It is only 361 metres above the sea, on Tanna in Vanuatu near Sulphur Bay, and Cook was drawn to it by its glow in 1774. That accessibility is exactly why the alert system matters: the government runs levels 0 to 5, and the level on the day decides how close anyone gets. Check it and do not argue with it. The mountain is sacred to the John Frum movement, whose followers believe he lives inside it with his countrymen, and the centre at Sulphur Bay counts the volcano as their ground. The IUGS named it one of the world’s hundred geological heritage sites in October 2022.
Tanna, Vanuatu
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