Lake Lalolalo

LakesWallis Island (Uvea), Wallis and Futuna

August·Peaking now

May–Oct

The south-east trades settle in — drier air, clearer skies over the black water and a firm red track to the rim. The cyclone season has passed, and tropicbirds still ride the updraught inside the crater below you.

Year-round The circle, the red walls and the dead-still water hold every month; tropicbirds and flying foxes work the crater year-round.

Lake Lalolalo is 88.5 metres deep inside its crater, and life reaches down only about the first ten of them. Below that the water holds no oxygen; below fifty metres it turns nearly as salty as the sea. The crater cuts so deep that it reaches beneath the lens of fresh rainwater floating inside the island, and seawater has crept in underneath: fresh at the surface, marine at the bottom, dead in between. Nothing stirs it. Fifty metres of sheer red wall shelter the water so completely from the trade winds that it never turns over. The circle, 400 metres across, was blasted open a few thousand years ago when rising magma met the island's groundwater and flashed it to steam. Uvea's rock is so porous that no stream runs anywhere on it; Lalolalo has no inlet and no outlet, and fills from below. A short track off Route 1, between Mala'etoli and Ahoa, ends without warning at the rim, where the forest floor stops. There is no way down and no swimming — you look at this lake, you do not enter it. White-tailed tropicbirds ride the updraught inside the crater, so you watch them from above, tail streamers bright against black water, and flying foxes cross low over the surface. The only fish native here is the Pacific shortfinned eel, which researchers think reaches the lake through a flooded passage from the sea. Wallisians hold the water and its forest under vao tapu, an old protective law, and the name of the lake fits the place: lalo is the Wallisian word for "below", and it is said twice. The United States ran a large wartime base here, and when it left, ammunition went into the crater; divers still find rounds of assorted calibres on the bottom. Few travellers reach the island, and the rim stays quiet enough to hear the wind in the trees.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Come near midday — the sun then stands high enough to light the whole basin; earlier or later, the cliffs throw a hard shadow across one side of the water.
The perfect circle belongs to the air — from the rim you see open water and the red wall opposite; only from the plane does the shape close into a ring.
The walk in is short and ends at the lip — a few minutes through forest off Route 1 between Mala'etoli and Ahoa, and then the ground simply stops; no path leads down to the water.
Keep well back from the edge — the wall drops sheer for about fifty metres, little stands between you and it, and the red earth underfoot turns slick after rain.

Things to do

1
Time your walk to the rim for midday
Come out to the lip around noon, when the sun has climbed high enough to clear the fifty-metre wall and light the whole basin instead of throwing a hard shadow across one side. Wait for the trade winds to drop and the surface goes glassy, holding an unbroken reflection of the trees leaning over the edge — the cliffs shelter the water so well that almost nothing disturbs it.
2
Stand on the concrete slab at the lip
A plain platform and a low fence, poured right on the edge of the drop, are the only built things at Lalolalo. Step out onto the red earth and the wall goes down fifty metres beneath your feet, straight into water nobody swims in.
3
Pick the circle out of the plane window
The rim never quite shows you the whole shape, but the flight into Wallis does. Through gaps in the cloud a dark, almost geometric ring appears in the green, one thread of red road running past it. That is the clearest view you will get of the hole a single steam explosion blew out of the island.
4
Watch tropicbirds ride the updraught below you
White-tailed tropicbirds work the air inside the crater, which puts them under your feet rather than over your head. From the rim you look down on white backs and trailing tail streamers as they turn against the black water.
5
Walk in through the forest that traditional law protects
The track leaves the road and closes over with trees that Wallisian traditional law, vao tapu, has kept standing here. It is a short, humid walk on red earth, loud with insects, and it gives no hint of what is coming until the forest floor abruptly ends.