Friday, February 24, 2017

3608 - Lost


Maybe you didn't see this story so I'm posting it just for you. It's strange. But make sure it doesn't happen to you.

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Iceland's Eldgjá canyon is a natural wonder. It's a beautiful volcano and canyon that contains one of the most vast lava fields on Earth.

As a result of this example of art in nature, it's no wonder this locale is a popular tourist spot. It receives several buses full of onlookers each and every week.

A bus full of tourists is the source of one of the stranger stories to come out of the Eldgjá canyon. Back in August of 2012 a woman went missing. What makes this story so strange is the fact that this missing woman joined her own search party to find herself.

How did this happen? A foreign tourist was part of a bus tour here. At a stop, she got off the bus, changed her clothes and freshened up.

The other passengers and the bus driver no longer recognized her as a result of her change. The driver waited an hour for her to return (not realizing she already had) and then notified the police.


The woman obviously didn't know she was missing. She may have also not been paying much attention, as once again, this was a once-in-a-lifetime trip and she might have been busy trying to admire and respect the beauty of nature.

So the tour continued, with the woman and the rest of the passengers ignorant of the fact that no one was gone. Meanwhile, authorities were sent to find the "missing" woman in the canyon.

A helicopter was almost deployed by the Coast Guard to assist in the search. However, conditions were deemed too foggy, so the search had to be conducted by foot.

Once the tour commenced, the bus driver and the passengers were disheartened to hear the woman still wasn't found. They all decided to join in and help with the rescue efforts.

In the end, over 50 people participated in the search for the missing women. It lasted for several hours and finally concluded at 3am.

I'm sure you'll be relieved to hear the missing woman was found. I'm sure you won't be surprised to hear the reason she was found was because the missing woman finally realized she was the missing woman and alerted everyone.

It turned out this all occurred because the bus driver hadn't counted the number of passengers properly and gave an incorrect description of the woman to authorities. This was reminiscent of a similar story that occurred in Iceland in 1954, where a young woman joined her own search party after she was reported missing after changing clothes while berry picking.

So the moral of the story here is threefold:
If you're a bus driver, count the passengers correctly.
If you're a passenger, pay attention to what your fellow passengers look like.
And if you join your own search party, be a gem and try to alert everyone you're not actually missing sometime long before 3am. Otherwise, you may be part of a giant (but beautiful) nature fail.