People surrounding the lava of Fargradalsfjall
Until I first heard about a particular volcano eruption in Iceland – the one in 2021, I thought it was basically impossible for a regular person like me to see something like that. But they deemed the eruption a “tourist eruption”, so many people went there and watched it as it developed. From the very beginning, in the first 24h, you’d see people get really REALLY close to the crater of the volcano. And it was INSANE, it was STUNNING, outstanding, impressive, and everything like that you can think of: just look at this video of the Fagradalsfjall volcano eruption very soon after it started. This volcanic system is situated in the Reykjanes Peninsula, just south of Reykjavik. The first people who went there in the first hours and days could go up the hill right next to the crater.
Fagradalsfjall crater from my hike
But soon after the hill was not accessible anymore because the lava flowed all around it, but helicopters could still land there. I was watching everything develop in awe on Facebook groups like the Iceland Geology | Seismic & Volcanic Activity in Iceland, and found a great Youtube channel called “The Reykjavik Grapevine” where Valur Gratisson, their at-the-time editor-in-chief was leading a newscast about Iceland in English and went to the volcano, interviewed volcanologist and basically provided all possible information about the eruption, the weather, the gasses, the hike etc, I fell in love with this channel particularly because of this person. The eruption went on and lasted for about 6 months – beginning on March 19th, 2021, this was the first eruption in approximately 8 centuries and opened up 4 craters at some point! But then it was over..
Fagradalsfjall volcano vents
Then, in August 2022 in the same region, just a bit more to the North another eruption started, the Meradalir volcano. This one was significantly shorter, but also stronger. There are websites with very useful information for hikes to Meradalir but in general to any volcano in Iceland that is “tourist-friendly”. I, again, watched everything as it happened in the Reykjavik Grapevine’s newscast. I was really, really, jealous to all people who went there. I wanted to go too, but Fill didn’t want to and I couldn’t drive there alone. So this volcano died as well after only just a month..
Meradalir eruption in 2022
Fast forward to this year, 2023, I just randomly decided to open the Iceland Geology facebook group to take a look at what’s going on and WHAT HAPPENED? A NEW ERUPTION (Litli-Hrutur – translates to the Little Ram) HAD JUST STARTED LIKE TODAY – the day I checked the group.. I couldn’t believe my eyes and started feeling the already familiar feeling of jealousy and despair that this would be the third year when I wouldn’t go because Fill is not spontaneous so he wouldn’t jump in literally today to buy tickets for tomorrow. Sooo.. i was talking to a colleague from work on that day about something work-related and randomly dropped the question to him “Do you want to go with you and Martha (his gf) to Iceland to see an erupting volcano?”. And to my surprise, he said he would ask her and 10 min later he said yes! I was like Whooooaah, wait a second, I kind of didn’t really ask seriously but he took it seriously so I got a bit scared because this wasn’t something I do very often – be spontaneous, even though I wanted, it was more of a daydreaming kind of thing. BUT since he said yes I got some super strength suddenly and burst of energy and decided to just ask Mark, my manager, if it’s ok if we work from Iceland for a few days. He agreed and we booked everything – Airbnb, car, and flights.
Meradalir crater from my hike
We went there, got the car, my colleague Pieter was driving and everything was perfect.. except.. on Thursday when we arrived, the hiking trails were open, but then they closed the area due to Northern winds blowing the dangerous SO2 and other gases right over the hiking trail. And these gases can kill you. So we were “sitting on needles” the whole time, so anxious as to whether or not we’d be able to see the volcano. We went to visit other places in the meantime but as Sunday was approaching – there wasn’t much hope that they will open the paths. And our flights back were on Sunday and Monday early morning. So we began thinking of extending and it would be expensive – another maybe 700 eur a person for an extension till Wednesday. But they agreed and we extended, had to return the current car and pick up a new one and change the Airbnb. We did all of that and kept our fingers crossed. On Monday we were lucky and they reopened the trails, there was Trail opened. Which seemed like the only one you could get a view of the crater from. So we rushed, had put on warm clothes (my mistake was I put on very thin sports leggings, so my legs were FREEZING and none of my 5 thick layers of clothes on my back, could save me from the winds there. Pieter was anxious that our water won’t be enough but we had plenty and the hike was actually pretty chill. You can check the map to the volcano eruption here. They said the hike was very difficult so we were mentally preparing for a huge hike, however, the hike was soo chill, only one tiny hill, and the rest was absolutely flat. It was like taking a walk in the Netherlands basically. They didn’t let us go all the way to the end of the trail, only until between the two hills where that little hiker icon is on the map, but we could see the crater. It was just.. VERY far away. Like 2km away. So there was a lot of heat from the lava between us and the crater and we couldn’t get decent pictures of the crater. But we saw the lava close to us, stayed for maybe 3-4 hours around and I really wanted to stay until dark, but my companions were already too tired and also worried about the gases. So we headed back around 30 min before sunrise. We saw it! Truly an unforgettable experience!
Pyffins at Dyrholaey
Glaciers near Jokulsarlon
Blue Lagoon silica-rich waters
We checked other places in Iceland like Blue Lagoon, some canyons and mostly stuff within the Golden Circle, but also went to Jökulsárlón glacier lagoon and Diamon Beach, the view of the glaciers will never cease to amaze me, all this vastness of endless ice “rivers”, I can stare at this for hours and hours! Then, you drive through old lava covered in thick moss giving it round bubbly-like appearance, and get to the Dyrhólaey cliffs to see thousands of penguin-like puffins. Just this really IS the best country in the world. If feels like Nature just gave and gave and gave to this place and then found out that there’s a whole world out there but it had given its best already to this island. What had been a major milestone hit for myself was that on the way back Pieter needed some rest from driving so he asked me to drive and I was super scared but being kind of forced into this, I did it and it was AMAZING! This was a key moment for me because…
We came back from Iceland but I didn’t feel quite happy – of course, I did see the volcano, BUT the day after we went hiking all paths opened, including A, which looks like is going halfway only, BUT I kept reading online that the path was extended, that people could go to the hill right in front of the crater and I felt bad about not going. REALLY felt quite bad. So.. what did I do, you think? I decided that “ok, I have savings, you can always earn money but this is something I’ve been craving and I can only live it NOW, so i must ACT NOW!”..
So I went to Paul, my Scrum Master and asked him to go back to Iceland, Mark wasn’t there, he was on PTO. So he couldn’t approve, but approval of Paul was more than enough for me, I booked everything again, this time I booked a hoStel – never been to a hostel before. BOOKED A CAR! Oh my God! I booked a car to DRIVE MYSELF in ANOTHER COUNTRY and ALONE! These were 3 things I couldn’t believe I was doing. But how I calmed myself down was like “It’s fine, you will be careful, plus it’s already booked, so you have no choice, you must do it, that’s it. PUNTO”.. so I went there, flew, excited and landed and at the Avis desk I pretended to be as cool as possible, as confident as possible but still added full coverage for any damage. I could either do that for an extra 100 EUR OR pay up to 2K if I get hit or if I hit someone. I preferred “better safe than sorry” and in this case, since it was my very first experience like that, I decided to not be cheap about it. I went inside the car and.. could not start the engine 😀 😀 My automatic car has Parking more, and this one (Hyundai i10) didn’t so I had to put down the hand brake and while pressing on the brake pedal to ignite the engine. This took me a bit to figure out but in the end it was all fine. I drove very slowly, read all about the Icelandic roundabouts where the inner lane has priority for taking an exit and you only go to the outer lane if you’re taking the first right turn, otherwise, you go to the inner lane, I took my time to fix my seat, mirrors, phone holder, driving gloves, to study the car, etc. It was actually very nice. As I was driving the 40 min to Reykjavik I was thinking “Look at me now! Doing something I wouldn’t have done if it were not for Pieter and Martha last week!” and “Look where I am! In Iceland, all alone, driving in this other-worldly landscape and seeing the erupting volcano on my right side!”. It was an insane, unforgettable experience. I totally loved every second of it. I arrived at the hostel’s presumed location but there was no hostel 😀 I thought maybe I should walk up the ramp over there and there it was! As soon as I went in, I was greeted by a guy from India or idk where, and a guy from Switzerland, who were just cooking and having dinner together. I was also soon greeted by a guy from Portugal, Ali, who apparently was the host and employee who lived in the place and cleaned and helped the guests. He helped me check-in and I met a very nice Norwegian lady, Solveig, who was very sweet and we immediately got the click together. She had booked a guided tour to the volcano for the next day (Saturday) and I had decided to be at the parking lot around 17:30 also on Saturday. There was a development in the meantime that due to many tourists not following the roles placed by the SAR (Search & Rescue) people, they had decided to close the site every day at 18h while the eruption lasts. This was making me wonder if I really should return, because the whole point for me was to stay after dark to see the glow of the volcano and its lava rivers. But i had read that they won’t let you INTO the parking after 18h but if you’re already there, they won’t do anything to kick you out. It would just be that you’re on your own. If something happens to you, they won’t risk their lives to rescue you, which was fair. I thought I’d do path A this time since it was extended, according to people online but was anxious that maybe they close the entry to the parking at 15h or so because you won’t have enough time to go and be back before 18h so they won’t let me in, but I had no problem getting in at around 16:30 on Saturday, 29th of July. Solveig had told me about visiting the Parlan museum, so I did that before my hike to the volcano, didn’t want to go to Sky Lagoon as it will make me sploot and lazy so I might not want to hike. So Parlan was a great option – I spent like 3h there, STUNNING films about Icelands’ volcanoes, glaciers, nature, and whatnot, was what you’d fill your time in there with. Also, numerous artifacts and information panels about every single thing about Iceland you could think of. I took many photos of these to read later, otherwise, I would never go out of that museum 😀 So mainly watched the films.
Anyway, so I go to parking P1 on 29th at 16.30h and see many people actually do the same – start the hike really late. I had hiking poles, terrible quality, which kept retracting inside the pipe but eventually, I found a way to strengthen them a bit, they did help A LOT though. I was so thankful for having them – the hike was much easier this way because I could help my legs with my arms basically and take some of the weight away from my knees, the right one of which was hurting. I started the hike and it was WAAAY more challenging and difficult compared to path E we did with my colleague. It was quite heavy and I had drank my water halfway before I even reached the midpoint. And that was with me trying to restrain myself from drinking it. I only had one bottle of 1.5L and had already given a few sips to Solveig earlier in the day and I also had a few sips so it wasn’t even a full 1.5L bottle. This time I got worried about not having enough liquids. But the challenging part is to get there, Going uphill makes you sweat a lot and therefore thirst increases, later on the way down you don’t crave water so much anymore. I also had a cola, so I drank that first unless I really, really needed water. As I was approaching the Meradalir Volcano viewpoint I looked ahead and was.. SCARED! I was already soo tired, I was barely walking, yet I had THIS much more to walk, I was literally half way there and the Litli-Hrutur hill where the volcano was, seemed endlessly far away from me. I braced myself and continued after a short break. Maybe the problem was also that I was completely alone and didn’t have any music or audiobooks to listen to, because I 1) didn’t have my headphones.. why bring them.. right? and 2) I had my phone on flight mode in order to save up the battery in case I needed to call emergency services or whatever. I did have a power bank but knowing my phone – the power bank barely charges it and it does it very slowly, so I wanted to avoid using it, if possible. So after another hour or so, I was close to the end, just the last mountain, the actual Litli-Hrutur hill was in front of me. I braced myself again and went up, I was walking on sand + ash + gravel, you take one step forward and return 2 steps back. Similar to what Rinjani’s last part in Indonesia would’ve looked like if we did it. But I made it and as I was stepping on the top of the hill I was talking to myself or maybe to.. Icelandic Gods or whatever: “Show me my reward! Where is my reward?!”. And then.. THERE WAS IT! The most mesmerizing, insane and crazy thing I’ve seen in my life – it was right there, maybe 50-60m away bubbling and glowing, shooting hot marker-like orange-coloured lava into the air. Shooting it again and again, rumbling when doing so. This marker-like orange was like nothing I ever imagined seeing – I imagined dark orange, like the fruit and yellow, but not this. This was so stunning, the cameras cannot do it justice, you really have to see it with your own eyes to understand it. I found a spot and sat down, had my little garden pillow with me, I knew from last time that it really hurts your butt to sit on the stones, so I came prepared this time. I filmed and shot photos of it, and then just leaned back and.. observed, watched it do its thing, I wanted to absorb everything in my memory for the future, to be able to remember it, and to create a real memory about it. I reached the volcano after approximately 3h of hiking, so it was around 19:30 maybe. I stayed until sunset, but it was dark enough due to clouds so I didn’t have to really stay until dark to see the glow – and there were no lava rivers, some small parts on the other side of the crater that I couldn’t see, so at some point I decided to head back. On the way down I saw people huddled around some fresh moving lava at the bottom of Litli-Hrutur so I took a small detour and went to check it out too. It was beautiful.. and hot 😀 I loved the heat bc I was really cold at that point, but that heat felt different. Like you’re stuck in the over and cannot escape it, i went further away from it – still could feel it slowly baking my face. I took a quick video and a quick timelapse for 1min and a few photos and I was out of there. I saw some girls with their music on speaker and since when I was leaving there weren’t many people left on the hill, I knew crossing paths with other people would be rare, so why not play my own music out loud now when I didn’t have to be really aware of my battery level anymore. I still was, but being on Flight mode really drained it slowly and I had decided that if it fell down to 25% (it was at 36%), i’d stop playing music and estimated that this would happen maybe in the middle of my hike back. But actually, i was at like 28% or so back down at the car. The music had given me much more energy and I hiked so much faster, also had my headlight with me to see the path. Apparently, it was really getting quite dark after 1 AM or so. From 2h45m on the way there, I took the hike back for 2h15m because of my music and overtook many people on the way. Probably also bc it was more downhill than uphill but still, there were uphill places. It was such a great hike. I loved everything about it!
I went to bed at like 3AM or so and wanted to sleep in the next day, but there were some tourists that didn’t shut up so i was forced to get out of bed. I wanted to drive to Dyrhólaey again to see the puffins and I did so, but was feeling like falling asleep so I was making plans to park somewhere and take a nap in the car. I chose a place in Vik after I got a pizza for lunch, and I did take a little nap, but people were looking at me weirdly 😀 So I decided to force myself to drive back and it was fine. I just went to bed at 9PM or so in the evening, having seen the cute little puffins again and having taken some great photos of them ^_^ During the rest of my time there, I went to the Sky Lagoon and also went back to the Eruption site, but only at the parking P2, where path E was, decided to go to the bottom of the lava from 2021, there was not a single person there, I really enjoyed this time by myself staring at the river from the lava coming down from the high mountain all the way to me. And I decided to experiment a bit since there was no one around and to take selfies with my Nikon camera and the app. As a result.. I’m back home now and ordered a remote control.. hopefully it will work. But while I was there, there were 3 tourists, speaking Russian, and hop right onto the lava. There are 300 signs that there is hot lava under the crust and the crust can break and that this is NOT old lava, despite it being 2y old and looking hard enough. They went on maybe half a kilometer onto the lava, peeking down at holes emitting sulfur and “wow-ing” at them. It was crazy to watch how stupid they can be, really. VERY stupid. And you could feel some warmth coming from the lava when you get close to it, it makes sense to NOT walk on it, but apparently not for these 3 stupid tourists.. :/
Posing at Litli-Hrutur
Charming Reykjavik
All right, so that was about my trip. I’ve got some amazing footage. Well, not as great as some professional drone and photography images and videos, I’ve seen, but I’m pretty happy about it. Yesterday I posted on Youtube a video compilation with some music on top, because, sadly, people around me didn’t shut up for a second while I was filming videos, and the wind was really crazy strong, so I couldn’t hear the thunders from the volcano either..
Here is my video on Youtube: https://youtu.be/OGNN2dKDz80
There’s a gallery with all photos you can see in big size :)))
