Blogs from North, Iceland, Europe - page 12

Geo: 65.6839, -18.1105Hoy despertamos temprano ya que ordenamos el desayuno al cuarto, a las 6:30, con la idea de ver un poco como entramos al fiordo en Akureyri, pero el desayuno llegó a las 7:15 y en ese momento el barco ya estaba estacionado.Tomamos el tour dirigido por Bjarki, primero fuimos al jardín botánico, donde permanecimos 40min. En el camión pasamos por la parte vieja de Akureyri y luego nos dirigimos a Godafoss. En esta cascada tiraron, simbólicamente, a los dioses antiguos tras haber votado a favor del cristianismo. Aquí estuvimos igualmente 40min. Y de regreso al barco. (Crewmember: Pamela, de Paseos de Taxqueña)Pero antes de abordar caminamos cerca de una hora por Akureyri.Zarpamos a las 2, y pudimos observar el bello Eydjafjördur. Fuimos a la segunda plática de Douglas, en estaocaión habló... read more

Geo: 65.6839, -18.1105Is what they call Akureyri. Its not hard to see why. We woke tired in the morning, and headed up to deck 11 for breakfast at the Windjammer. At first glance outside all hunger and fatigue was instantly replaced with excitement. We headed straight on deck to soak in the beautiful scenery. Whitecap mountains all around a beautiful still bay. Sunshine illuminating a pretty town. It was an inspired sight. We then went for breakfast, disembarking around 11. No tour was booked today. Our plan rather, was to explore the relatively small town on foot, and seek out Puffin penguins. We had been advised they were common here. Whilst this turned out to be a lie, exploring the city was fun. Our first stop was the 1940s hilltop church looking over the town. It ... read more

Good Afternoon from Iceland. We are sitting in the kitchen of an older farm house (Solvanes farm) that is 21 km south of Varmahlid, the last 6 km on a gravel road. There is a river running through the back yard with a small bridge. Today has been an adventure. We left the hostel this morning and headed north on the ring road (Highway 1). To be honest the weather isn't great... pretty foggy in parts this morning but some sun this afternoon. As we went along we stopped for a few photo ops. We saw three separate waterfalls just peeking through the hills. We were so impressed with the hills we stopped and low and behold as we stopped there was a waterfall in our sights... I have included one of those shots here. After ... read more

We went to a waterfall. It was beautiful. We went to little volcanoes. There were flies. They got on my dad, but not me. We went to a place with a lot of lava rocks. We had lunch there and it was cool. We went to these hot lava. It was bubbling. It was fun. We went to a hot pool to relax and it was fun - Sofia Journal Entry Aug 13. So after after 2 nights in Akuyeri and breakfast at our favorite bakery, we were off to our next destination - Myvatn. Daddy told me that this would be an area of incredible beauty as he read lots about it in "the book" as I called it (lonely planet). This was not going to be a day of a lot of driving, but ... read more

Our last day together included two crater hikes before lunch, a drive to Akureyri, a flight back to Reykjavik, and dinner near the pond. The morning hikes took us to Namafjall and Hverfjall, two overlapping calderas. Before and after hiking up to the main rim of Namafjall we took in the airs of the nearby mud geysers. The pumice trails easily gave way under our feet and we were fortunate to avoid the rain which would have made the surface dangerously slippery. The hike up to Hverfall on broken stone was not as eventfull as the way down. This provided a fun slalom run for the more nimble, and a challenge of balance and quad strength for others. At the bottom of the trail we entered Dimmuborgir (Dark Castles) as area of raised lava formations. After ... read more