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Published: April 7th 2015
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Having checked the Aurora forecast and finding a level 4 activity prediction (that's pretty good) and seeing that the cloud cover forecast is for clear skies I book a Northern Lights tour out from Reykjavik with a pick up at my hostel at 9.30pm. At 9.50 the guy turns up just as my hostel reception is phoning the company to see where my pick up has got to. Then follows a ridiculously circuitous route to find the other people waiting at their hotel. When we finally find them we again go round the houses trying to get on the right road out to the BSI terminal where we are now the last to arrive, holding everyone up! The guy from the other group picked up with me gets really arsey about seats on the coaches - 'we were ready at 9.20pm and your incompetent driver didn't know where he was going blah blah blah'. Although he has a point it's all a bit silly so I side step the complaining and find myself a spot on one of the very full three coaches waiting to leave.
Eventually mollified the other group gets on and we set off to the Reykjanes
peninsula to find a spot in the countryside away from all the city lights. After about half an hour's drive we all get off the bus togged up in many layers and rush to find a spot to set up our cameras. 10 minutes later and frozen to an ice block lots of people get back on the coaches to sit it out. I go back to put on extra layers I'd brought and go to re-find my camera spot looking like some purple version of Violet Beauregarde from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory after she's nicked the blueberry pie chewing gum and blown up to massive balloon size!
And so the wait begins. Lots of peering into the darkness hoping to see a glimmer of light heralding the start of a spectacular Northern Lights show. My feet, legs and hands are freezing and I keep near the side of one of the coaches out of the wind. We stay like this for ages and a tiny whispy sort of something shimmers in the distance. It's so hard to tell if it's anything or just our mind telling tricks. Nothing develops from this and eventually the guides decide to take us to a different spot, somewhere where there's also toilets and a cafe selling hot chocolate. After more fruitless waiting for something to happen we reluctantly have to admit this was a no show night and head back to Reykjavik for random dropping off at or near to hotels on the way. Being downtown based I am one of the last to be dropped off and I don't get into my bed until 2.30am! With my alarm set for 6.45am I'm not going to get much sleep before the start of my Snaefellsnes Peninsular tour the next day. At least I have another shot with the northern lights tour as we all get a free pass to another night as we weren't lucky tonight.
Time to sleep zzzzz.
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