Into a volcano, crossing a blasted heath and langoustines

Today I am going on a trip to the magma chamber of a volcano. I am  going on a trek of three kilometers to reach the volcanic peak across the most god forsaken land I have ever seen.  G and I are in a  walkers' lodge beside the main road.  It is warm and cosy but outside is horrible.  It is raining and blowing and black lava pokes out all around in funny shapes, a black finger beckoning, a fist maybe.  Moss and lichen grow further out from the hut and the last vestiges of the winter snow cling to the mountains.

There is an Icelandic poem on the wall.  I copied it out while waiting as I thought it was good

Hotel Earth by Tomas Gudmundsson (tr Bernard Scudder)

It’s a curious journey this human life we  lead

We are the guests and our hotel is the earth

While some check out others arrive instead

New parties always turn up to fill the berth.

That journey inspires wanderlust in some

But many dread the thought of starting out

Still more in a tearing hurry come and go

While others sit by the hotel window and wait.

But places like that are crowded by and large

With constant hustle and bustle as guests compete

In an endless game of push and shove and barge

To grab themselves a suitably comfortable seat

Yet some are quite content to stay apart

In a corner seat, undisturbed and meek

For different motives guide the human heart

And people vary in the goals they seek.

Admittedly most people are welcomed in

And greeted with ceremony when they reach the door

And many live in luxury to begin

But they start to fret when departure date draws near.

Then we are swamped like a waterfall by the chill

Thought that are stay will cost all we are worth

When Death, that mighty bailiff shows the bill

For all we have put on tick at Hotel Earth

Then we realize this is where our credit stops

There’s no more chance to place some wiser stakes

For all that life has lent us death recoups

Balancing Methuselah and Peter’s books.

My fellow trekkers arrive and I’m relieved to see most are no better equipped than me and not all are young things.  Despite the bubbling enthusiasm of our young guides they seem surly and uncommunicative for the most part.  A lot are from the USA.  One has a fleece on with “Help the Wounded Warriors” on the back.  I ask him what it means and apparently it is a charity for returned soldiers with troubles.  I sort of think he might have a gun or two in his cabinet at home and he wasn't keen on the question.  Perhaps I should've known.

We are all provided with ankle length rubber raincoats in vivid yellow and made to pronounce the name of our mountain and then set off in single file across the horrible heath.  I quickly fall behind but young guide sticks behind me and says it doesn’t matter. 

We pass a deep dark hole with ropes around it and I spot some little clumps of pink flowers and rush on by and determine to be on my own on the way back and never mind the nice young women in charge.  Actually the terrain is not impossible as long as I keep my eyes open for pokey rocks.

The story of this tourist attraction is quite interesting.  After the eruption of Eyjafjallajokull in 2010 which stopped all international aircraft,( 17000 flights had to be cancelled) National Geographic wanted to do a feature on the structure of  a magma chamber and paid for a lift to transport cameras and so on 150 feet to the floor of the chamber.  Afterwards, an entrepreneur took over the equipment for lowering us tourists and had done very well.

At the base camp we are given helmets and harnesses and get into a little lift on a cable in our groups..  The lift is open sided and slow and I watch the folded layers of rock as we go down.  Every so often wheels on the side of the cage bump the sides of the tube.

The first thing I notice on disembarking the lift is that my sense of balance is all to hell.  I am grateful for the ropes that encircle the chamber as I clamber the route up and down the tumbled rocks.  The colours on the walls of the dimly lit cavern are every shade of brown and ochre and black.  Above us is a nasty nostril of a lave tunnel with a smear of black around its opening.

I think what I experience most in the crater is a sense of deadness.  All that wild turbulence come to rest and not a living creature (other than silly volcano pilgrims like us) choosing to come here.  Other caves I’ve been in seem part of a life cycle, albeit a slow one.  Stalagmites and stalagtites accrete their millimetres over centuries - but nothing happens here.

We were given a bowl of lamb soup on getting back to the top.  I was a bit cross because I wanted to stay down in the chamber for longer in case the deep earth had anything more to whisper to me, but the tour processed us like sausages.  The soup, was nice but the weather had got a lot worse on the top with clouds of mist and wild wind and lashing rain.  “There’s a storm coming” said the girls.  They didn’t want me to go alone but I argued it was safer if I was slow and steady on my own and anyway they could pick me up if they passed me prostrate in my yellow raincoat on the moor.

In fact it was an arduous but uplifting slog back to the roadhouse.  I licked the sweet rain from round my mouth and held my own against the wind and took time to touch the little pink flowers and the feathery lichen.  There was nobody anywhere for a long time and then two young ones came running past like horses whinnying at the weather in their yellow raincoats.

Grant was waiting for me at the roadhouse and I was soaked so we decided to forgo the delights of sleeping in the van that night and went to a little village, Stokkseyri which had a renowned langoustine restaurant, Fjorubordin.  The village had been a lively fishing place until quotas were imposed.  Our hostel was an old fish factory and had been turned into an art gallery and rather hokey looking ghost museum.  It was huge and empty apart from the little nest like bedrooms  round the edge of the big hall  each of which were a pair or maybe three tourists.

Our langoustines were delicious and I completely forgot my soggy shoes as we cracked open the shells and went “Mmmm” again and again.  What a good day it had been.