Major earthly eruption sparks tourism boom

Manila

With chili-flavored “lava ice cream” in demand and awestruck tourists packing onto viewing decks, the erupting Mayon volcano is sparking a local business boom in an impoverished region of the Philippines where tens of thousands of others have fled for their lives.
Albay Province has built its image around the picture-perfect, cone-shaped Mayon volcano whose periodic activity offers both boundless opportunity as well as enduring misery.
Since Mayon began shooting out lava two weeks ago, restaurants and hotels just outside a nine-kilometer (5.6-mile) “danger zone” – some complete with volcano branding – have enjoyed an off-season tourism bonanza.
“We are thankful because we have many guests but it also makes me guilty because so many people are affected,” Purita Araojo, front desk officer at Vista Al Mayon Pensionne, told AFP.
Nearly 90,000 people living around the volcano have fled to overcrowded relief camps where authorities have warned of a worsening sanitation crisis.
The largely farming region is still bracing for a potentially explosive eruption, though experts are convinced everyone is now out of reach of the 2,460-meter (8,070-foot) Mayon’s threat.
With its 52nd eruption in about 400 years, Mayon is the most active of 22 volcanoes in the Philippines.
But its rumblings are also a spark of inspiration for tourism-oriented businesses, which have fashioned spicy menus while prominently displaying volcano photos and logos. A bestseller at a local restaurant is the “Mayon Hot Lava” – Mayon-shaped ice cream scoops topped with bits of chili and spicy syrup.
High-end hotels provide live TV streaming of Mayon’s eruption, while out-of-town journalists and tourists are also corralled into “volcano-view” rooms with windows looking out onto the slowly unfolding disaster.—Agencies

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