GRAND CIRCLE

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INTERNET SERVICE IS IFFY THIS FAR NORTH. WILL POST AS I CAN.

Surprise! Surprise! It’s a cloudy day with a chance of showers but the temperature is a balmy 62. Our group met on the dock and was introduce to Jens (pronounced Yens) for our grand circle adventure. There are fifteen of us and our cost was $40pp versus $189 the ship was charging.
We had a quick tour of Reykjavic. It was a National Holiday so the streets were empty. Tradition has it that everyone heads out to the country for the last three day holiday of the summer. Yes, up hear summer is coming to the end. I wish I had more time to explore this city. It is very clean and almost graffiti free. The oldest building dates to the mid 1800’s. Before then they built of turf. The population of Iceland is about 350,000 and half live in Reykjavic. Most Icelanders own their home or apartment. Health care is free, there is a social security system, and education is free through the government run university.

The first stop was the rift valley. This extraordinary place is where the North American tectonic plate drifts west while the Euro-Asian plate drifts east and the valley continues to widen and sink. It is an extraordinary feeing that I can stand on one tectonic plate and fifteen minutes later on another. The valley has a very deep lake in it. The lake itself is another 100 meters deep which gives you an idea of the forces pulling the land apart. On one side of the path, tall shear walls rose up many feet while on the other side was the valley far below.
It was here that the first Icelandic Parliament met in the 1000’s, the oldest Parliament in the world. They would meet once a year to settle disputes, discuss laws and have something like an annual trade fair.
The countryside in this part of Iceland is very green with good grazing fields for sheep, dairy cattle and horses. I tell you more about them later. The only crops are wheat and rye. Since the climate is warming, barley will be tried soon. Also, potatoes, turnips and cabbage are produced and tomatoes, cucumbers and red, yellow and green peppers are grown in greenhouses.
There are two energy sources in Iceland, hydroelectric and geothermal. Since there is no carbon used, the air is virtually pollution free. The most homes are heated and have their hot water delivered from geothermal plants. About 25% use electricity. Iceland doesn’t have minerals or oil but it does have cheap, green energy and there are five aluminum plants here. They have to import the bauxite from South America or Asia but the energy is so cheap here it is still profitable. This brings me to another stop on the tour. Huge storage tanks have been built to house a reserve of hot water should the pumping station or pipeline fail. Rather than have this blight visible on a hill in town, the clever Icelanders built a viewing platform, cafeteria, gift shop and a revolving up scale restaurant on top. The view of Reykjavik is beautiful and I could see a femoral on the grounds. That is another strange sight. As we road along, fumaroles were everywhere, even in the front yard of someone’s lovely home.
We stopped for lunch and I had chicken nuggets and malt. It looked to me like a dark beer but it was like a cross between beer and cream soda, sweet with a foamy head. It is the first and last malt for me. It was raining when we sent out to see the geyser but not too hard and the thermal action made up for the weather. It is pretty active and dependable as geysers go and erupts every five to ten minutes to a height of about 30’. To my great surprise and pleasure I was able to capture the ‘bubble’ just before the eruption. It was very cool.
Then we were off to the waterfalls. While the falls were thunderous and mighty, the temperature here was chilly, the wind strong and the spray from the falls sounded like sleet on my hood. I couldn’t keep my lens dry so my pictures were less than perfect.

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