A Canadian travel blogger has opened up about a “disaster” trip to Iceland serving as a warning to be careful who you choose to travel with.
Amy said she was “finally ready to spill the tea” about the time she booked a trip to the popular European nation after a break-up.
She said she was scared to travel alone as she had never done it before so invited everyone she could think of to join her.
“Eventually, the only person who was available was a girl I worked with at a restaurant,” she wrote on Instagram this week.
“We were acquaintances and work pals but not exactly besties.”
After landing in Iceland, Amy said she “started to see a dark side” of her travel buddy come out when drinking.
She claimed it was only their first night when her colleague was arrested by six or seven police officers in their hostel.
She said the woman “tried to attack me, punched the hostel receptionist in the face and was kicked out of the hostel”.
Exactly what she was afraid of, Amy found herself travelling alone.
“I had to completely rearrange my plans to avoid her,” she said.
Fortunately, she made friends with other travellers at the hostel and went on to see the northern lights, did group hikes, saw waterfalls and geysers, and drove around the Golden Circle, the most famous scenic route in Iceland.
“I realised you need to be careful with who you travel with and sometimes the best people to travel with are complete strangers from your hostels,” she said.
“They made my experience and gave me the confidence to travel on my own after that.”
As for the horrible travel buddy, they still had to fly home together, which Amy said was “insanely awkward”.
Unsurprisingly, they no longer speak.
Now as an experienced traveller six years later, Amy is hosting her own group trip back to Iceland next year.
The Nordic island nation has been in a state of emergency since November 11 as it braces for a possible volcanic eruption in the Reykjanes peninsula, home of the famous geothermal spa Blue Lagoon – one of the country’s biggest tourist attractions.
However, in a bulletin on Wednesday evening, the Icelandic meteorological office said the probability of a sudden eruption “is decreasing every day and is considered low” due to declining magma flow and seismic activity.
Icelandic authorities said they were considering pumping water onto any lava that spews out if a volcanic eruption threatens the evacuated town of Grindavik, home to about 4000 people.
They would use the water to cool and divert the flow of lava.
Grindavik was evacuated two weeks ago after magma shifting under the Earth’s crust caused hundreds of earthquakes in what experts warned could be a precursor to a volcanic eruption. Incredible pictures showed huge cracks in roads from the seismic activity.