Eye to eye
with a volcano

It's Saturday morning, March 20th in the year 2022. You actually don't want to look at your cell phone anymore because all you read is Corona, the bad incidence values ​​and what you're not allowed to do. But there was another headline that morning. The volcano in Iceland, which had been threatening small earthquakes for months, has erupted!

We are Annika and Mathias, travel photographers from the Palatinate. Always looking for that special adventure, the most beautiful spots on earth and touching encounters. We have experienced a lot in the last few years together: we went on safari in South Africa, looked for the northern lights in the Lofoten Islands and watched whales in Hawaii, dived with whale sharks in Indonesia and observed orangutans in the jungles of Borneo. But we have not yet faced an erupting volcano. So we really had to find a way to fly to Iceland. There were numerous arguments against it: it's a pandemic, we're in a lockdown, in Iceland you have to be in quarantine for five days, nobody knows how long the volcano will keep spewing, we have to spontaneously apply for vacation.

We can already see the smoke from the volcano on the way to our quarantine accommodation and we can't wait to finally hike there after five days. On Easter Sunday the time had finally come - after the third corona test of the trip early in the morning, our negative result came in the afternoon and thus the freedom to move freely throughout the country. The suitcases were already packed and so we got into the car and drove purposefully towards Fagradalsfjall. It's an ice-cold day even by Icelandic standards, it's -10 degrees Celsius and there's an icy wind blowing. As if the path that isn't actually a path wasn't challenging enough! The hike leads over an ancient volcanic field that is littered with rubble and you can only find the way using path markings. Up a mountain so steep that after just two weeks of the volcano being active, ropes were installed to pull it up. Even though it wasn't four kilometers, we arrived quickly at the place where we were face to face with the glowing opening of the volcano. What a sight! A hill that opens at the top, thundering lava spraying out and flowing towards us. In the two weeks that the volcano has been active, a black area has been filled with lava and continues to grow. It's an incredible feeling and an absolutely incredible sight. The darker it gets, the more clearly you can see the liquid, red-hot stone. You can feel the warmth even from a distance and we are absolutely thrilled. But when the earth suddenly shakes for a second, we have great respect. There was probably an underground explosion,

Of course, we took our favorite backpack from Drakensberg with us on the hike. The backpack N° 127 offers exactly what we need on this hike and all kinds of trips. In general, the bags from Drakensberg stand for adventure and that special experience for us and are now our constant companions.

The next morning we get the news that the earth opened up again early in the morning and two more volcanic craters were formed. This week we hiked to the volcano two more times and watched the natural spectacle. This earth is simply amazing!