First of all woke up to find out Carlton has imploded and sacked Mick Malthouse. What a fab start to the day!!! The first photo is a meme/cartoon joke about the whole thing. Thought you would like Pa, Nan, Ian and Robyn.
Slept for a long time last night and lay in until 9am, but when I got up I quickly realised I sleep walked last night. Doesn't happen very often but when it does it creeps me out! I had been wearing my retainers and in the morning couldn't find them anywhere. They were wedged between my bed and the wall. And then Marleen told me she saw me out of bed at 1am opening my locker which once I thought about it I could vaguely remember doing. God I'm weird....!
Today I had a bit of a chill out day. I'm taking it fairly easy the next few days before I head back into the craziness that is london. So I let myself sleep in this morning and then chatted to Ash for an hour which was nice!!
Then I headed to the Volcano House, a small museum and cinema. I paid my 1700 króna (about $16 Aussie) and watched an hour long documentary about volcanoes here in Iceland. I remember learning about volcanoes at school and always being interested, so I took the opportunity being in such a cool place to learn some more!
So as I've already mentioned Iceland is situated on the mid Atlantic ridge between two tectonic plates (see Sunday's blog 'Golden Circle' for info and photos) which means that it has a ridge essentially of volcanoes which has quite a lot of activity in the way of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The film covered three main earthquakes - 1973, 2010 and 2011. But Iceland has a volcanic eruption on average every five years, and earth tremors or mini earthquakes every day. The museum even had a TV that showed you where and when earthquakes had happened in the past two days! See the photos below.
In 1973 there was an earthquake in the Vestman islands off the South Coast of Iceland. I passed them yesterday and could see them from the bus! Luckily the fishing boats were all in port that night so there were no casualties and everyone got out ok. This was called the Heimaey eruption and is Iceland's version of Pompeii, as 100m cubed of lava was spurted out per second, covering the town, and overall 250 million cubic metres was spurted out throughout the entire eruption creating 20% more land on the island. All or most houses on the islands were covered partly or completely with ash and the recovery operation was massive.
In 2010 as I've mentioned before and you're probably already aware, Eyjafjallajökull (which I can now proudly pronounce - ay-eff-et-le-yerkall phonetically) erupted, sending a 9km high eruption of ash into the air which eventually created the ash cloud that interrupted flights in Europe and even as far as Africa for up to six weeks in March and April 2010. A lot of the volcanoes in Iceland are situated underneath glaciers, and for Eyjafjallajökull this is the case. Due to this when they erupt the volcanic material turns into ash because it comes into contact with water and ice from the glacier. In this instance the ash was quite coarse (63% silica) and so would interfere with the engines of planes, hence grounding them for weeks. The ironic thing is that while Europe and beyond suffered due to the grounding of flights and people were stranded everywhere, Iceland operated mostly as normal. It was darker than usual as the sun was partially blocked out by the ash cloud, but the cloud blew in a southerly direction so didn't affect Iceland all that much. However due to the volcano being underneath a glacier it did cause a lot of flash flooding because of melted ice.
One more interesting thing - Katla, a volcano next to Eyjafjallajökull, is the one I mentioned yesterday that is due to erupt soon. I took a photo on the map of how close together the two are. The glacier I hiked yesterday was right in the middle!!!
The third eruption the film spoke about was Grímsvötn 2011 in 2011. Its ash had only a 50% silica content so was fine and didn't pose a risk to plane engines.
After the film I had a look around the small museum at the earthquake monitor, various maps and rocks from volcanoes.
Then I walked back to the hostel via the supermarket. Had some $1 two minute noodles for lunch and then went for a run along the harbour. The mountains across the water were so bright today! But clouds descended on them as I ran. I ran all the way from the hostel to the old harbour and then around the spiral pathway there. About 25 minutes running in total, then did some squats, lunges etc and walked back. Feeling really good now!!!
Had a nice long hot shower (no guilt re water or energy here remember?!) and now I'm just waiting for Marleen to get back from her day tour before we do dinner!!
I'm doing something absolutely amazing tmro - descending into a volcano and exploring! I am so excited. But if you don't hear from me tmro you know why ;)
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
Slept for a long time last night and lay in until 9am, but when I got up I quickly realised I sleep walked last night. Doesn't happen very often but when it does it creeps me out! I had been wearing my retainers and in the morning couldn't find them anywhere. They were wedged between my bed and the wall. And then Marleen told me she saw me out of bed at 1am opening my locker which once I thought about it I could vaguely remember doing. God I'm weird....!
Today I had a bit of a chill out day. I'm taking it fairly easy the next few days before I head back into the craziness that is london. So I let myself sleep in this morning and then chatted to Ash for an hour which was nice!!
Then I headed to the Volcano House, a small museum and cinema. I paid my 1700 króna (about $16 Aussie) and watched an hour long documentary about volcanoes here in Iceland. I remember learning about volcanoes at school and always being interested, so I took the opportunity being in such a cool place to learn some more!
So as I've already mentioned Iceland is situated on the mid Atlantic ridge between two tectonic plates (see Sunday's blog 'Golden Circle' for info and photos) which means that it has a ridge essentially of volcanoes which has quite a lot of activity in the way of earthquakes and volcanic eruptions.
The film covered three main earthquakes - 1973, 2010 and 2011. But Iceland has a volcanic eruption on average every five years, and earth tremors or mini earthquakes every day. The museum even had a TV that showed you where and when earthquakes had happened in the past two days! See the photos below.
In 1973 there was an earthquake in the Vestman islands off the South Coast of Iceland. I passed them yesterday and could see them from the bus! Luckily the fishing boats were all in port that night so there were no casualties and everyone got out ok. This was called the Heimaey eruption and is Iceland's version of Pompeii, as 100m cubed of lava was spurted out per second, covering the town, and overall 250 million cubic metres was spurted out throughout the entire eruption creating 20% more land on the island. All or most houses on the islands were covered partly or completely with ash and the recovery operation was massive.
In 2010 as I've mentioned before and you're probably already aware, Eyjafjallajökull (which I can now proudly pronounce - ay-eff-et-le-yerkall phonetically) erupted, sending a 9km high eruption of ash into the air which eventually created the ash cloud that interrupted flights in Europe and even as far as Africa for up to six weeks in March and April 2010. A lot of the volcanoes in Iceland are situated underneath glaciers, and for Eyjafjallajökull this is the case. Due to this when they erupt the volcanic material turns into ash because it comes into contact with water and ice from the glacier. In this instance the ash was quite coarse (63% silica) and so would interfere with the engines of planes, hence grounding them for weeks. The ironic thing is that while Europe and beyond suffered due to the grounding of flights and people were stranded everywhere, Iceland operated mostly as normal. It was darker than usual as the sun was partially blocked out by the ash cloud, but the cloud blew in a southerly direction so didn't affect Iceland all that much. However due to the volcano being underneath a glacier it did cause a lot of flash flooding because of melted ice.
One more interesting thing - Katla, a volcano next to Eyjafjallajökull, is the one I mentioned yesterday that is due to erupt soon. I took a photo on the map of how close together the two are. The glacier I hiked yesterday was right in the middle!!!
The third eruption the film spoke about was Grímsvötn 2011 in 2011. Its ash had only a 50% silica content so was fine and didn't pose a risk to plane engines.
After the film I had a look around the small museum at the earthquake monitor, various maps and rocks from volcanoes.
Then I walked back to the hostel via the supermarket. Had some $1 two minute noodles for lunch and then went for a run along the harbour. The mountains across the water were so bright today! But clouds descended on them as I ran. I ran all the way from the hostel to the old harbour and then around the spiral pathway there. About 25 minutes running in total, then did some squats, lunges etc and walked back. Feeling really good now!!!
Had a nice long hot shower (no guilt re water or energy here remember?!) and now I'm just waiting for Marleen to get back from her day tour before we do dinner!!
I'm doing something absolutely amazing tmro - descending into a volcano and exploring! I am so excited. But if you don't hear from me tmro you know why ;)
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
PS: I've included two photos of both the Vestman Islands and Eyjafjallajökull at the end.
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