Kicking Ash and Taking Names!

Prior to my departure, friends and family kept tabs on the Eyjafjallajökull volcano and luckily for me, the ash clouds blew over Europe (sorry, guys) and left flights in and out of America untouched! Additionally, the volcano went dormant a week before I arrived. The little adventurer in me died when I heard the news- I really wanted to see it up close and personal! But I wasn’t about to let the fact that the volcano decided to take a chill pill keep me bummed, so on our first free day, the roomie, another member of our choir, and I rented a car.


We took the Ring Road south which led us straight to Eyjafjallajökull. The devastation from the eruption was noticeable on the outskirts of the glacier when the road suddenly turned into gravel (pic above). We later read on a sign by a bunch of waterfalls we stopped at that the volcanic eruption caused massive flooding by the glacier. Crews had to blow up parts of the road and lay down gravel to save the bridges and ease the flooding. There was water and fields of black, ashy mud all around.

After getting back in the car, we noticed large, dark clouds ahead of us and tried to decipher whether we were going to get rain or a bunch of ash. It was ash. Out of nowhere, we were in a blanket of ash. There was no visibility- it was like being caught in a very thick fog (the picture above was taken from the car as we were driving). We immediately hit the brakes and put on our flashers, slowly creeping along the road. The wind was whipping the ash everywhere, allowing us momentary views of clear visibility quickly followed by a storm of thick ash that blocked the view of the mountains alongside the road.

Being the tourists we were, we pulled over and took pictures. I struggled opening the car door because the wind was so strong! The scene was surreal, like it was the aftermath of the apocalypse (See pic above- one of my favorite pictures I took on the trip). A barbed wire fence lined the land and everything was covered in black ash. The not too distant mountains were hardly visible and the ground was a mix of mud and ash. Meanwhile, the wind was ferocious and kicked up ash into my contacts. My face got wind burned (discovery made back at the hotel that night- be sure to pack facial lotion!).

I grabbed some ash from the ground and filled up half of a gallon-sized Ziploc bag as a souvenir. After a good 20 minutes, we got back in the car to make good time down to Vík. I never actually got to see the volcano because we had rehearsal that night back in Reykjavík and time was a premium, but the experience of being out there in the aftermath, at the foot of Eyjafjallajökull was worth it. It was by far one of the most unique/fun experiences of my life, right up there with paragliding in the Swiss Alps!

PS: What do you get when you have American tourists visit a country with bountiful ash? ASH JOKES. I kept a running tally of our puns in my travel journal. The jokes were hilariously bad, stupid, corny, etc. but we had fun with it the entire trip! (Most came about when I showed my Eyjafjallajökull ash to our group in the hotel lobby). For the sake of keeping this blog rated PG, I won’t list what we came up with :)