WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en

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The wind's coming from behind me,

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the camera might get rained on,

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if I look tired... it's because I am.

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This video ended up being a disaster,

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there's no other word to describe it,

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but I have travelled too far
and expended too much energy

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to throw it away entirely.

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And I have learned quite a bit of stuff
about how Iceland is handling

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tourists flocking to its
new and dangerous volcano.

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So, from the outskirts of Reykjavik airport,

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here's a story that didn't work
how I expected it to,

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but which I hope is still interesting.

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First things first:
Iceland has a new volcano.

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And it's close to the airport,
and relatively easy to get to.

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So the plan was:

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film a video with a flowing
river of lava behind me.

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And as the plane's landing,

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I can sort-of see the volcano
out of my window,

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there was a lot of low fog
and it was all a bit fuzzy,

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but the volcano was clearly erupting.

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So early the next morning,

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I meet up with Bjorn,
who's my guide and drone pilot.

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He's very very good at his job,

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I've got him for one day and one day only,

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he's working on a dozen other projects
all over Iceland this month.

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We drive the 45 minutes to the volcano site,

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and then walk along one of the
tourist trails up the mountainside.

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I took a bit of video as we went.

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We've got to head up the ridgeline

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that you can see in the distance in that shot.

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It's a bit of a steep climb at the start,
but it's very possible:

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you can see silhouettes of people
up on the ridge,

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and there were folks of all ages
going up to see lava.

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It takes about 90 minutes of steady climbing,
give or take:

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sometimes we're overtaking slower tourists,

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sometimes we're getting out of the way

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so that runners from a climbing race
can speed past us.

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I have no idea how they managed to run
the downhill bit without slipping on loose

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rocks.

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But anyway, we get to an overlook point.

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That's not the volcano: it's just where the
lava

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spills over into another valley

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when there's too much lava, like water
out of an overflowing bath.

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And that view is our first bit of bad news.

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Because just a few hours earlier there was
active, flowing, red-hot lava there.

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You could see it on the webcams that
various companies have set up.

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Now: solid rock, on the surface at least.

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And Bjorn sends up the drone to see what's
happening.

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That's his volcano drone, by the way,

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it's a little bit melted in a couple of places
from too many close encounters with lava.

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And the drone goes over the main basin,
and then over the crater itself,

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and the pictures that it sends back
show the volcano is completely quiet.

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It has just... stopped.

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We keep climbing anyway, over the next ridge,
to the main overlook point.

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Few hours earlier, we would have seen fountains
of lava exploding from the main crater,

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and flowing through the valley.

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We could have climbed down and stood...
maybe not next to it,

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but a few metres away?

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But as it is... there's just a lot of
disappointed tourists looking at some rock.

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So at this point, I need to
introduce you to The Graph.

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The Graph is data from the
Iceland Meterological Office's sensors,

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and they track the rumblings at certain frequencies
at all the seismic locations around Iceland.

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So when the graph for this volcano is high,
it's erupting.

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When it's low, it's quiet.

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It's been erupting for a long time now.

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Bjorn shows me the graph on his phone,
and it's clear: at 5am, the volcano just...

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stopped for some reason.

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And activity is low, and it's trending downwards.

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There will be no new lava for...

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maybe for just the day.

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Or maybe it's all over and
it'll never erupt again.

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But okay.

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I can still make the best of this.

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We head down into the valley,
next to the cooled lava.

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So the bit I was sitting on was still just
slightly warm?

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And while we knew that bit was safe,

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there were other parts where there'd be
semi-liquid rock underneath ready to kill

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you.

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Earlier on, we'd spotted a couple of fools
walking out across the lava.

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Don't do that.

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Anyway.

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We set up, I make some
adjustments to my script,

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I try to rehearse my Icelandic
pronunciation a bit, which is not good,

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and we start.

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“In March 2021, Fagrads--

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“sorry, I screwed that line up,
let's do that again, sorry!”

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“In March 2021, after months of
rumblings and warning signs,

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“Fagradalsfjall, this volcano in Iceland,
finally erupted.

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And, uh,

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“well, it's not quite as dramatic
as you might hope.

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“You will have noticed that there's not
any

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moving or spraying lava behind me.

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“The volcano... is not performing today.

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“I’m not saying don’t come to
the Icelandic volcano,

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“but this is unpredictable...

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“and unpredictable things that spew
molten rock aren't exactly safe.

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“But I'm not here to talk about the
volcano itself.

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The question I've got is:

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“how do the folks in charge
of this area deal with

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“an unexpected, unpredictable and
potentially-lethal new tourist attraction?”

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Because that was going to be
the main point of the video.

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I did't just want to go "ooh, volcano",

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because lots of people have done that,

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I want to talk about the
infrastructure around it.

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I've got interviews set up
the next day with someone from

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the Iceland government's civil defence and
emergency management department,

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I've probably got those words
in the wrong order,

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and with a geologist.

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And I know that Bjorn can provide some
shots of what the volcano looks like

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when it's in full flow,

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he's got a lot of footage from many many trips
he's taken over the last few months

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and he's never published it before.

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Well, he's published lots of it,
but there's shots that he hasn't,

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so I figure okay, I can use those new shots,

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in context, of course, I'll tell
the audience when they are,

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but I can make it work.

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So, I get the rest of my script done.

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Bjorn suggests that instead of going up
the hill and retracing our steps back down,

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we walk through the valley alongside
the cooled lava flow.

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Which sounds good, but it turns out

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there's a reason that hardly
anyone goes that way.

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It looks spectacular, the lava formations
look like something from another planet,

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there's heat haze--

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Actually, no, I guess that's because all
the other planets are filmed in Iceland.

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Anyway, looks great, but it turns out it's
like walking on a pebble beach,

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a sloped pebble beach,
for kilometre after kilometre.

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And then we get to the bit that's
a 45-degree slope down and...

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“At this point, it's less climbing
and more surfing...”

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That's a good ten, fifteen minutes of
steady, slidey, ankle-wrenching descent,

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I fall on my arse several times.

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But I know to keep my
centre of balance uphill,

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because a gentle fall back is better
than tumbling all the way down,

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and we get back safe.

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I'm a bit disappointed as we
get back to the car park,

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no other way to say it,

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but I'm pretty confident I can
make it work in the end.

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Bjorn drives us back to Reykjavik,

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we part ways, I take a nap,
I get some dinner.

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But we both keep an eye on the Graph.

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And at about 6pm, the activity
starts to tick up again.

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9:30, the live webcams that are
pointed at the volcano,

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they start to show lava explosions,
just in the main crater.

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And Bjorn knows that there's an angle,

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at the top of the western part of the hills,

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where he can get me and the crater in shot,

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lava behind me, and he can
also send the drone over,

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and maybe it'll even start flowing
into the valley again.

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It is very late, and we are so tired,

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but it's time to climb the
volcano a second time.

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By the time we arrive
at the car park, it's 11pm.

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There are a few other optimistic tourists,

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who I guess have looked at
the same data and images we have.

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This time we take the western route up.

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Still a long climb, still a bit of
scrabbling up hills,

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it's really really tough.

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We pass another dried lava flow,

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and we pass the giant earth wall
that's been constructed to

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try and make sure the lava
goes in a particular direction.

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It's midnight by the time we're
approaching the top, but,

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it's Iceland in midsummer,
so it's still light!

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And... we have to stop short
of the crater.

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And we can't film.

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Because we reach the clouds.

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In the time it took us to get up there,
fog has rolled in, low cloud has rolled in,

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and the toxic gases from the volcano
are now drifting that way as well,

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and if we go any further it won't be safe

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and we won't be able to see anything anyway.

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The crater is so close but
there's no way to get there.

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Bjorn sends the drone out and
gets some incredibly atmospheric shots

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from directly over the crater,
he nearly melts the camera...

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but all we'd see from the path
is cloud and smoke.

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And then there's one last bit of hope.

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Because Bjorn noticed that
there's clearly lava flowing.

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Maybe it's going to go
down the valley and...

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no, it's going into a hole in
the ground and it's disappearing.

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So we head back down.

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Because
there's nothing more we can do.

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Down the hill, back to Reykjavik,
in total we've spent

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seven or eight hours of the day
hiking up and down mountainsides.

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Bjorn has gone above and beyond.

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And I figure that I've still got
a couple of days left,

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maybe the situation will change
and I can go back on my own.

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I won't have a drone,

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and without a guide I'll have to stick
strictly to the tourist route, but...

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maybe it'll work.

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I can still do the interviews, too,
they will help.

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And then I got a really bad
case of food poisoning.

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Because I guess Icelandic-Mexican
fusion cuisine was a bad idea!

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So now, I am physically exhausted,

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both from the hiking and from
spending a day in my hotel room

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"talking to Huey on the
big white telephone".

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I had to cancel the interviews.

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And even if the volcano had changed

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and started flowing over
the last couple of days,

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which it hasn't...

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trying to hike for hours to somewhere
with no, um, facilities,

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while my body is knackered,
is not an option.

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And I can't extend my stay here.

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The last time I visited Iceland, I quoted
Sam Hughes, science fiction author,

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and I'm going to do that again with
a different part of their work:

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Iceland is the place you
go to remind yourself

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that planet Earth is a machine,

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and that all the organic life that has
ever existed amounts to a greasy film

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that has survived on the exterior of that
machine thanks to furious improvisation.

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I did not get to see lava close-up.

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Volcanoes are unpredictable and dangerous,

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and there aren't many that are
tourist attractions for exactly that reason.

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I did learn a few things about Icelandic
infrastructure and emergency management,

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and I can share them with you now,

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so I guess: technically, mission accomplished
and I've still got a video.

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But this is kinda my furious improvisation,
not the lifesaving kind, but

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sometimes these things don't work out,

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and you've gone too far and
put too much effort in

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to just throw it all away, and you improvise,

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and this is what I've got you.

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I wish I could wrap this
story up in a neat bow,

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but the only way that this could
possibly have a good ending is if,

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somehow, in the few hours just before now,
just before I leave Iceland,

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the volcano decided to have a
sudden, massive eruption,

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sending tens of thousands of tons
of lava flowing down the hill,

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and by coincidence my stomach
settled down as well,

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so I could gather what feels a bit
like the very last of my strength,

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hike out there one more time

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and at least get a shot
standing in front of lava.

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No.

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The volcano's just gone quiet again.

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I'm going to go get on a plane.

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And I will bet that damn volcano erupts--

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[muffled, with background noise]
--just after I take off.

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Did I just pull my microphone cord out of...

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Well either that or it wasn't plugged in at
all

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and none of that worked, so here's hoping!