Blogs from South, Iceland, Europe

Here are some of the highlights from my most recent trip to Iceland. Enjoy.... read more

After our last two stops on the Golden Circle-- first at the gurgly, bubbling cauldron of Geysir spitting steaming water angrily into the sky, and lastly at the breathtakingly beautiful waterfalls of Gulfoss--all foaming and spraying like some enormous mythical creature--we rode our gal Suzy towards the quiet riverside town of Selfoss. At Selfoss we set up our camp for the first time--and actually set up IN the city itself, just down the road from a Landsbankinn ( the bank infamously responsible for Iceland's 2008 economic crash). Here we battled the ever-persistant daylight and finally caught some--albeit a few--Z's. Our third day in Iceland began fueled by the same spark of adrenaline that spurned our trek around the Golden Circle. We woke early, collected bearings, acquired free cups of coffee at N1 (Iceland's answer to ... read more

We were a little beyond the halfway point of our time in Iceland, so now needed to start making our way back west. We had been making excellent progress for the past few days so decided to take it a little easier today and arose late. We spent the morning playing cards and enjoying the freshly baked bread that had been made for us by our hospitable hosts. Overnight and in the morning snow had fallen and the area around us had been covered in a fresh sheet of white. We had not had the opportunity to explore this beautiful area in the daylight so we decide to take the car down a path towards the mountains in the direction of the Vatnajokull glacier. It is impossible to say as to what the nature of this ... read more

After a great breakfast, Sara and I sadly left the wonders of hotel Ranga and made our way to Skogafoss to begin our trek. We'd seen that there was a three or four day trek between the two volcanoes with the infamous Eyjafjallajokull to the west as you cross the pass of Fimmvorduhals. We fancied that although we wouldn't go all the way, we'd head a jolly good distance in before turning back. We parked up at Skogafoss and before beginning the trek thought we'd take a good look at this magnificent waterfall. From 62 meters up, it is a wide, powerful waterfall that feeds into a small river that flows several miles out to sea. All around the falls are birds, flying, nesting and calling to each other. It is a cluster of seagulls and ... read more

We could feel that weightlessness you feel as you descend towards the runway, but had been in a cloud for some time and had given up looking out for the Icelandic mainland from a bird's eye view. Suddenly, the mist disappeared and we were only about 20 feet up from the ground; within seconds, we'd touched down at Keflavik airport. The scenery was snow for as far as the eye could see, we were desperate to get out and sample some cool Icelandic air. We picked up our 4x4 from the airport and without too much explanation, we were on our way. It took about 15 minutes to encounter the first problem. A moment's lack of concentration at the roundabout caused the car (Korean) to stall. A common problem: but sadly, it wouldn't start again. We ... read more

Ratings explained: 'Bad times' - self explanatory 'Don't bother' - self explanatory 1* - worth a look 2* - Good Times 3* - Unmissable + - emphasis on the rating NOTE: this entry has a LOT of photos, you'll need to click the link to page 2 to see them all. It seems I failed to upload photos of the beautiful fjord village of Seydisfjordur in my last blog and the excellent Gudufoss waterfall on the way out of town so I'm starting the photos in this post with those missed ones. To segue immediately; regarding a myth I'd heard about Iceland having countless extremely beautiful women ; this myth was completely debunked during our trip. There were rare extremely beautiful girls, but generally we found Iceland did NOT have disproportionate amounts of hot women; in ... read more