Reventador

Imagine a giant mountain that likes to let off steam, or rather, hot ash and rocks! That's Reventador! It's a volcano, which is like a mountain with a chimney that reaches deep inside the Earth.

Reventador is located in a faraway part of Ecuador, a country in South America. Its name even means 'exploder' in Spanish, which is a big clue about what it likes to do. It's part of a line of volcanoes far from the usual volcano spots, sitting right above the amazing Amazon rainforest.

Reventador has been very busy since the year 1541. That's a super long time ago, even before your grandparents' grandparents were born! It has 'burped' out ash and rocks more than 25 times.

Sometimes, when it really gets going, the ash can shoot up super high, like 11 miles into the sky! That's higher than most airplanes fly. Even though it's so active, sometimes people don't even know it erupted because it lives in such a wild and remote place.

Reventador is a special kind of volcano called a stratovolcano. It has a big, round bowl at the top called a caldera, which is about 2.5 miles wide. Imagine a giant pizza pan!

But inside this pan, a new, smaller, cone-shaped volcano has grown. This new cone is where most of the exciting action happens. It's covered in forests on its sides, but the very top where it erupts is bare rock because the heat and eruptions keep it clean.

Reventador is one of the most active volcanoes in Ecuador. In 2020, it was almost always puffing out clouds of ash every single day! These ash clouds could be as tall as a few skyscrapers stacked on top of each other.

Sometimes, at night, you could even see the top of the volcano glowing red hot! It also has frequent 'avalanches' of hot rocks tumbling down its sides. It's like a mountain with a lot of energy!