Fire

Holuhraun lava eruption, December 2014

I love fire, always have, always will. And the idea of earth's molten core exploding all over the place, the sheer devastating force of nature behind it and the unrelenting flow of lava rolling over everyone and everything in its way makes me feel like a four-year old in a candy store. I'd rather not know what that says about my personality.

Iceland has roughly 37 active volcanoes. One of them was acting up while I was on Sabbatical and I had the fantastic opportunity of flying over the ongoing volcano eruption. My significant other (hereafter known as Frankenspouse or FS) and I booked not one, not two, but three dates to give the stars every possible chance to align. I'm not exaggerating here, the trip involves a 45 min flight (each way) over the highland plateau, a notoriously hostile environment with  some of the harshest conditions on the planet  - including lots of wind. So first of all, you have to have perfect weather between the airport and the eruption site for the tour provider to even consider taking the trip. You also want to keep a close eye on the weather and road conditions in you area (in our case a 100 km drive away). Iceland is fairly microclimatic, so sun and warm temperatures in one area are no indication that there isn't a blizzard going on one valley over. On our drive to the airport, we had to go over a mountain pass, so we had to make sure it was, well, passable, which it often isn't in winter. Checking weather and road conditions seems to be one of the favourite past-times in Iceland and I fully embraced that philosophy. To make things more complicated, the pilots of these private machines may only fly in daylight, which gives you a window of about five hours at the end of December.
On the first day we had booked, we received a call early in the mourning, cancelling due to bad weather conditions. In our valley, the weather was picture perfect, but you gotta trust the pilot on this one.
On the second day, we received another call, cancelling the trip due to bad weather. The flight was my Christmas gift to the FS, so at that point, I started panicking that it might not happen at all, since he was bound to leave for Luxembourg in a few days. I tried to book more dates, but apparently everyone and their brother wanted to go on that trip and they were fully booked for the next three weeks.
On the final day, the stars aligned. We drove to Akureyri and frantically searched for a pharmacy, as the tour operator recommended taking something for travel sickness and neither of us has the most stable of stomachs. We took the pills, met our fellow passengers and folded into the tiny six-seater standing on the tarmac. The flight was incredibly bumpy, even with perfect weather conditions. The wind tossed our little plane about and it became pretty clear pretty soon, why they explicitly recommended medication against travel sickness. Shortly after we took off, while we were flying over the breathtakingly beautiful highlands, the girl next to me (the FS and I didn't get to sit next to each other, guys in the front, gals in the back for optimal weight distribution) started looking really bored. And she continued to look bored, even as we were flying over boiling lava, feeling the heat of the volcano in our faces and staring into the gates of hell. I wanted to punch the B1@tch in the face for being so indifferent to this once in a lifetime, bucket-list experience and taking the spot of someone, who might miss out because the stars didn't align for them.
Of course there was no punching and I kept my opinions to myself. Later on, I found out that the poor girl did enjoy the trip, but that she was feeling gawd-awful and desperately trying to hold on to her stomach contents by singing loudly to herself (we were wearing headphones to cancel out the noise, so I couldn't tell at the time). And, oh boy, can I relate, I was still nauseous, hours later, so 'Dear girl next to me, please accept my sincere apologies for the hostile thoughts and kudos for your creative coping skills'. Eventually, not all passengers managed to keep their breakfast down, but the plane was well equipped for that and apparently, this happens on almost every flight. Still glad it wasn't me.

Anyway, if you find yourself near a volcano eruption, go and look at it. It's humbling. And beautiful. And primal. And such an adventure.