Could lava man Patrick Koster be the world’s most devoted volcano fan?
For full story and pictures:
He is so mad about the smoking mountains he has slept at the edge of
an active crater, proposed to his wife on the slopes of a simmering
cone, and reorganised his honeymoon to make sure he didn’t miss an
eruption.
Crater crazed Patrick has even dodged machine-gun totting bandits in
his quest to take beautiful pictures.
But years of scrambling around at the dangerous hotspots have paid off
- shown by his awe-inspiring photographs that capture these violent
and dangerous phenomena in all their glory.
“If there is a volcano nearby it’s pretty difficult not to think about
it,” he said. “If you go to a holiday destination where there is one,
everybody takes photographs of it and there’s a good reason for that. ”
Wearing only a gas mask and normal clothes for protection, the 40-year-
old engineer, from Spijkenisse, Holland, has been travelling around
the globe for 10 years in search of the most most famous sites.
His decade-long obsession started when he visited Lanzarote in the
volcanic Canary Islands. Since then he has got closer and closer to
the lava-spewing landscapes he loves.
So far his journey has taken him as far as troubled Ethiopia, where an
extinct volcano left fields of spectacular salt-formations, to Hawaii
where molten lava spews into the blue sea causing ground-shaking
reactions as fire meets water.
His danger-fraught hobby is so important to him, he even mixes the
most important events in his life surrounded by volcanoes.
In October 2000 he asked for the hand of wife Irma, 36, during a visit
to see Mount Teida on Tenerife, Canary Islands.
He said: “I was thinking about an unusual way to propose and I thought
why not?
“She did not care so much about the volcano. She was just really happy
I proposed. But I don’t think she suspected what I had in mind for a
honeymoon 10 months later.”
The following year, when the couple honeymooned on Sicily, Patrick
even changed their plans to make sure he visited a volcano in action.
To the keen photographer’s horror infamous Mount Etna had just gone
quiet when they arrived.
Patrick said: “I was a bit disappointed but fortunately we were able
to take a trip up to Stromboli. It’s a nearby island and the volcanoes
there were very active.”
Since then lava hunter Patrick has invested in equipment that could
withstand harsh conditions common with volcanoes. A better camera that
could withstand noxious gases and a gas mask let him take this
pictures he loves.
“But what’s more important than buying lots of expensive equipment is
preparation and respect,” he said.
“I drink around eight litres of water before I go up to a site to keep
me hydrated. But unless you want to get killed you have to pay
attention.
“It’s a highly unpredictable environment and if you are standing in
the wrong place at the wrong time it could be the end of you.”
But even with Patrick’s cautious attitude he has still had horrifying
brushes with death.
“In Tanzania when I started this project I had been taking pictures on
a rocky platform looking down at some lava,” he said.
“I left to go and take some pictures at another spot and when I
returned a few minutes later the shelf had disappeared. It was very
lucky.”
And the danger doesn’t always come from the volcanoes themselves.
In Ethiopia last year Patrick was forced to tour the country with an
armed guard to protect him against bandits.
“We ran into some unfriendly groups who were armed but our guide did a
very good job of hiding the danger from me. I don’t think we knew the
threat a lot of the time until we thought about it afterwards.”
Patrick’s stunning collection was captured in Hawaii and Ethiopia,
last year, America’s Yellowstone Park in 2006, and in Tanzania in 2004.
Words by Liam Miller
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