14 DAY TRIAL // As always, Google has the coolest updates for Street View. This time around the company wants to take you inside a volcano.
After taking you beneath the waves, checking out unique places around the world and helping you spot your house thanks to footage taken with its special cars, Google has decided to explore the Marum crater on the island of Ambrym.
The pictures were taken about 400 meters (1,300 feet) into the crater, giving you a unique view into what volcanoes are really like. Ambrym is one of 80 small islands that make up the country of Vanuatu, which is about 1,000 miles away from Australia.
The beautiful islands are full of green jungles, black sand beaches and nine erupting volcanoes, which means Google had plenty of places to choose from.
"Starting today in Google Maps, we invite you to join us on a journey to the edge of one of the largest boiling lava lakes in the world on the Vanuatuan island of Ambrym. To get inside the active volcano, we partnered with explorers Geoff Mackley and Chris Horsley, who repelled 400 meters into the Marum crater with a Street View Trekker collecting 360-degree imagery of the journey down to the molten lava lake, which is roughly the size of two football fields," Google writes in its blog post.
Horsley described the experience as "phenomenal," particularly how it feels to have the heat so close. He hopes that by putting this place on the map, people will realize what a beautiful world we live in.
The story of the volcanoes
"We believe that the volcanoes Marum and Benbow are devils. If you go up to a volcano you have to be very careful because the two volcanoes could get angry at any time. We believe that Benbo is the husband and Marum is the wife. Sometimes when they don’t agree there’s an eruption which means the spirit is angry so we sacrifice a pig or fawel to the volcano," says Chief Moses in the local village of Endu, giving a short explanation about the local lore.
There are now 81 countries covered by Street Views, as well as countless historical and natural sites around the world, including the Grand Canyon.