Extreme Vacation: Descending Into an Active Volcano

Photo: Bradley Ambrose

Tired of your boring ol' vacation? Try extreme vacations, which will definitely make you feel alive, if they don't kill you first. National Geographic has a gallery of 20 of the most extreme, hair-raising adventures on the planet.

For example:

Descend Into an Active Volcano
Vanuatu, South Pacific

As a general rule, lava is best seen from a great distance. That is, of course, unless you're a group of daredevils who, led by Kiwi adventurer Geoff Mackley, descended 640 feet (195 meters) into Vanuatu's Marum Volcano to witness the explosive bowels of the Earth firsthand in 2010. The resulting video, in which a man in a heatproof suit came within 300 feet (91 meters) of a viciously boiling lake of lava, went viral. It's pretty clear that live volcanoes are unpredictable and their craters offer all sorts of inhospitable challenges: toxic gas, extreme heat, tumbling rocks, and unwarranted explosions. Just because it's insane doesn't mean that it's impossible.

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