Yesterday I got back from a marvelous vacation to Iceland, the land of fire and ice! There were volcanoes and glaciers galore (though a little heavier on the glacier side). I went with Aline (silly Amaury backed out to go to sunny Mexico), and we drove around the south and west of the island for a week, hiking up a storm. This post is kind of like a book, but I've numbered the days, so you can treat it like a chapter book and just read a bit at a time. It's kind of like a Song of Fire and Ice novel... just with less nudity more volcanoes, and no arbitrary character death...
Also, I'll try to add a nice map when I get back from my next journey; there's just not enough time right now, and I want to get some photos up!
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| Climbing into the butt of the airplane |
(1) Our first day we visited the bridge between 2 continents, which crosses the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. This is completely awesome. Seriously. It's where the ocean floor COMES FROM! The surounding region is called 100-Crater Park, and it's just an endless plain of crumbly lava that looks like another planet. Seriously, I'm pretty sure this is where the Starcraft 'Badlands' environment was conceived. We drove along the south coast through a bunch of lava fields and along some remarkable cliffs to reach Skogar, where we spent the night.
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| INSIDE the Mid-Atlantic Ridge! |
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| Skogar: It's an okay campsite, I guess... |
(2) The following morning we set out to climb along the river at Skogar, up a volcano between 2 glaciers (it's as awesome as it sounds). The stretch along the river was beautiful, with more waterfalls and geology at every turn. About 700m up we crossed a bridge (with only one side) and set out into more desolate terrain. At this point, the wind from the glacier turned to rain and then a bit of hail. This, in combination with the drop in temperature accompanying 700m of elevation gain, forced us to turn back before we reached the summit of the volcano. Still an amazing river climb, though. We proceeded (damp and cold) along the south coast to a town near Skaftafell, a HUGE national park centered around the big SE glacier.
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| Waterfalls on the climb |
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| The bridge to nowhere |
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Funny that I'm smiling. At this point I had just realized I
was too cold to tie my boots right after pulling on rain pants. |
(3) The next morning we drove into Skaftafell and hiked to Svartifoss (the Black Waterfall), which bursts from a wall of basalt columns. From there we proceeded to a viewpoint overlooking The Sandar, a flood plain from massive glacial melting events that our guide book aptly described as "soul-destroyingly flat and desolate". On the other side of the ridge, though we could see the toe of the glacier and it's baby icebergs drifting around in a lake - that was cool. After the nice man at the visitors' center kindly jumped our car (an old thing with holes rusted right through it - I guess that's what you get for renting from a company called 'SAD Cars'), we drove on to Jokulsarlon, a big lagoon full of bright blue icebergs. I'd never seen fresh icebergs before, and their blue color is just amazing. We spent another night at the foot of the glacier, but this time we had a warm dinner, as there was a kitchen at the campground. Yum!
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| Svartifoss (The Black Waterfall) |
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| At the toe of the glacier in Skaftafell |
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| Jumping the car. What a nice man. What a crappy car. |
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| Fresh, blue icebergs! |
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| The edge of The Sandar with glacier in the background |
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| Another tolerable waterfall view from the campground |
(4) On the fourth day we got some (kind of ) clear skies, and we drove back to the West to stay see the Golden Circle, the tourist zone of Iceland. We saw Geysir, the geyser after which geysers are named, and Gullfoss, a big 2-directional waterfall formed by tectonic uplift and subsequent erosion. Since the sun was still out there was a double-rainbow overhead - most excellent. We camped in a little farm village, where we milled around watching the sun dip toward the horizon until about 23h, when we got bored. Honestly, it only got dark-ish around 1am. Crazy.
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| Hella: it's a 'city' in Iceland. It's hella small, though. |
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| The (new) geyser at Geysir |
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Geysir (the old geyser), after which all geysers are named.
It's 'dormant' now (...more like 'dead'). |
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Gullfoss, a 2-directional waterfall, with rainbow!
It actually developed into a double rainbow, too... |
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| Yeah, this was taken at 22:54h. |
(5) As a final stop on our Golden Circle tour we headed west through Laugarvatn (a geothermally-heated lake) to Þingvellir (pronounce 'Þ' like 'Th'). This was once the meeting area for the old Icelandic parliament, the Alþingi (like in Hyperion!). It's basically a big rift zone in the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, and it's got good land and a lake, so it's a great meeting place. The fractures along the edges also make for great "Mid-Atlantic Ridge" photos, even though it's not ACTUALLY the center of the Ridge. After that we drove on up to a little town on the Snæfellsnes peninsula (west Iceland, north of Reykjavik) and waited out a nice little rain storm with fog so thick you couldn't see the adjacent mountains.
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In the rift valley at Þingvellir!
Dream come true! |
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| Driving the fjord road |
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| The Icelandic Horse: Simply the Best. |
(6) We drove over the mountains that run through the center of the peninsula the next morning, in spite of thick (disappointing) mist, but the folks at the visitors' center told us it was likely to clear in the evening. We decided to drive to a few of the cities on the peninsula, and on the way opted to take a nice little side road for a view of the fjord.
Mistake. Our nice little lane quickly became an unpaved road, then more like a gravel proof-of-concept for a road. Our poor old clunker of a car was barely managing, then we found the stream. It didn't LOOK like a big stream (3m across, maybe), and it was at the bottom of a gully, so all we had to do was roll through, right? Nah-uh. We made it until the only things still in the water were the rear tires and were starting to climb out of the gully when the car decided it was over it. We tried the engine a few times, but she was down for the count. We tried pushing it, but up a steep hill in half a meter of glacier water just wasn't going to work. Fortunately the main road was close, so we trekked about a kilometer and tried to wave down someone. In the end, a German couple tried driving down the gravel road where we were stuck and we ran and caught them to ask for help. They came to the car with us and we got lined, up. Aline and I were knee deep in icy water, the man was in the driver seat to steer, and the woman was pushing from one of the doors. Just for jollies our German savior decided to try the engine, and IT STARTED!!! I was so relieved and elated that I almost wet myself. Sure, Aline and I were a little embarrassed that it had turned out to be so easy, but the relief FAR outweighed our broken pride.
From there we drove on to the west tip of the peninsula (no more gravel roads!), and as we rounded the end the sky began to clear! We hiked up a couple volcanic craters (Raundholl and Saxholl) on the wast edge, then as we wrapped around to the south side of the peninsula the sun came out in earnest, illuminating Snæfellsnesjokull, the glacier after which the peninsula is named. People claim it possesses mystical powers, and it's also where Verne's
Journey to the Center of the Earth begins! We stopped in a town called Arnarstapi and took a great coastal walk along cliffs of basalt columns. The geology is just unbelievable there, and all the impressive things but right up against each other. We tried to watch the sun set over the glacier, but it descended in at a perfect angle parallel with the slope of the great cone of ice. Once again, it got late before the sun set, so we turned in with a great view of the peninsular mountain range in the persistent dusk.
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| Snæfellsnesjokull in the sunshine |
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| Basalt column cliffs |
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| More tolerable camping |
(7) And then it was the last day. We woke to a misty fog once again. Oh, well. We drove inland along the south of the peninsula and stopped to hike to one more crater. The mist was very heavy, and it was almost silent as we ambled across a broken lava field filled with crumbling craters and crevasses that the locals claim is the home of elves and fair folk. Finally, the dim outline of a monstrous crater developed out of the mist on the horizon. The thing was only 88m tall, but after walking an hour across lava fields in low visibility it seemed like it was straight out of the cretaceous. There was actually a crater within the big crater, which was cool, but with the mist lying so heavy we could see almost nothing from the crater rim.
We hiked back then drove our way south into Reykjavik where we spent the afternoon wandering around. They have a cool church modeled after a cliff of basalt columns - very cool idea - and there's a big statue of Lief Erikson in front of it. As evening wore on we made our way to a bar and enjoyed some Icelandic beers, principally one called 'Viking Classic' - awesome. We stayed out late then slept a few hours in the car before driving the car back to the airport (5am) and flying back to warmer climes - the Netherlands. Hah.
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| Misty, elf-guarded crater |
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Little did you know 'Tabasco' is actually a traditional
Icelandic name... |
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Basalt column-themed church in Reykjavik
with Lief Erikson in front. |
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| VIKING BEER! |
(Epilogue)
In summary, Iceland is dominated by three words for me: Impressive, Sudden, and Damp. Different parts of the island look totally different - from farms to fjords, to glaciers, to marine cliffs, to lava fields... Each place is remarkable, though. The geology (both its scale and its variety) was mind-blowing. One of the most interesting things was just how quick the transitions between regions were. You could be in a farm one moment and then you'd be in a lava field growing nothing but a heavy yellow-green moss, yet each environment seemed to stretch indefinitely - you'd only notice the change when it was already upon you. Finally, it was a bit wet. I guess that's to be expected for an island in the north Atlantic. Heavy morning mists pretty much ensured you'd get a little damp each day. However, a little wet weather couldn't dent the impressiveness of the country and all its spectacular landscapes. It was just a beautiful trip.
