Volcano Diving: These Maniacs Did it With a GoPro [VIDEO]

Forget spelunking. While descending into the deepest recesses of the Earth can be very cool, it comes nowhere close to the awe-inspiring footage released by a team of volcano diving maniacs.

Explorers George Kourounis and Sam Cossman recently descended into the Marum crater of the active Ambrum Volcano on the South Pacific's Vanuatu archipelago.

"More people have visited the moon than the fiery bottom of this spectacular and deadly place," Cossman wrote for a recent YouTube upload of the experience.

Kourounis, Cossman, and two guides, Geoff Mackley and Brad Ambrose, spent four days on the crater's edge and descended twice into the crater, equipped with sturdy rock climbing equipment, heat resistant gear, facemasks, and three cameras.

As you can see in the team's video, they ascended the volcano as close as possible by helicopter after spending some time in a nearby village.

Kourounis told The Huffington Post in an email that climbing into the Marum - a whopping 1,200-foot decent has been a dream of his for some time. (Scroll to read on...)

"Getting to [Marum] was kind of like a reverse climbing of Everest," he told the Post. "The volcano fought back at us, and we had to deal with terrible weather, tremendous heat from the lava, descending and ascending 400 meters of near vertical, loose rock face, acid rain so strong that it could have come from a car battery, and a variety of other craziness."

Kourounis is not just an explorer willing putting himself in some of the most dangerous and awe inspiring places in the world. He's also a storm chaser, a documentarian, and a man who even got married on an active volcano.

Cossman is no stranger to adventure either. You can even watch some footage of his underwater Cenote cave diving in Mexican waters.

Interestingly, this pair is certainly not the first explorers to climb into the very bottom of the Marum. Back in 2010, guide Mackley descended into the Marum with his own team, giving him the knowhow to help this most recent pair get as close to rolling lava as possible while capturing some amazing video.

It was a "window into hell," Kourounis added. "Dramatic and violent" and utterly worth the trip.

Diving into an Active Volcano from Sam Cossman on Vimeo.