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Published: March 5th 2015
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"Why on earth would you go to Iceland in the middle of winter?", was usually the first thing out of anyone's mouth when I told them of our travel plans. Well, for one thing, it's about halfway between Europe and the US, so it makes a logical meeting point for Guillaume and I. Also, I've always wanted to go to Iceland, does the time of year really matter? Seeing the northern lights has always been on my bucket list, and there's no way to see them with summer's midnight sun, so why not see what 10 days in winter arctic conditions is really like?
I landed in Reykjavic at about 7am local time, though it felt like midnight. The sun wouldn't be up for another three and a half hours. Snow was blowing in chilling gale-force winds that rocked the bus on it's way to the city over ice-covered roads. I just wanted to sleep for a while, what with the jet-lag and general tiredness that comes from spending 7+ hours on a plane. The morning's darkness didn't help. By 9am I was in Reykjavik's morning commuter traffic and the sky was a deep royal blue. Christmas lights sparkled from
Days of Gray
Mural especially apt for this time of year. apartment windows and over small residential streets. I saw this through heavy lids as I slow-blinked and willed myself to stay awake at least until I could check-in at the hotel. The Flybus available from the airport for about $25 was nice, and after a connection at the local bus station, took me directly to the door of the apartment hotel "Room with a View" that I had booked a few days earlier.
This was to be my long-awaited honeymoon reunion with my husband, whom I hadn't seen since July. We'd gotten married in January in the hopes of finally getting the necessary visas and paperwork in order to live together in America. We are still waiting for the US visa, but in the mean time I was able to get my European visa and we decided to meet halfway first for a treat before settling back in Paris for the rest of the visa wait. Because of the nature of the trip, I decided to splurge a bit on our Reykjavic hotel, the first stop of our 10-day tour. Room with a View was lovely, everything I had hoped it would be. We had our own small apartment
Neighborhood
Taken from the clock tower of the church, the little roofs in rainbow colors managed to stay bright and cheery even under all the snow. style room with a large wall of windows overlooking the shopping street Laugavegur. Our favorite part was the large bathroom with the private 2 person jacuzzi tub which we could fill to the brim each night un-self-consciously as all the hot water came directly from natural sources under and around the city. No environmentalists guilt here with big baths and long showers! The entire island is rife with volcanic activity, and though there are risks inherent with that (we all remember the eruption of the unpronounceable volcano of 2010), there are some definite upsides as well. Unlimited hot water and cheap energy being at the top of that list. So I settled in, took a nap, and waited for Guillaume to arrive on his afternoon flight in from Paris.
Walking around Reykjavic in winter is really quite lovely. Though the temperatures were below freezing those first few days (-12 C, 10.4F), I had come prepared with warm clothes, and something about the little houses with their bright roof-tops and christmas lights strung throughout warmed me up from the inside. It was like walking in a living christmas card, made all the more magical by the friendly babble of Icelandic
Church
The Lutheran Church and Leif Eriksson looking over Reykjavik. coming from the locals all around. The language is very odd to my American ears, and odder still to my eyes. Names filled with accent marks, crossed o's and eth's (that funny t with a loop at the bottom, ð), all words longer than should be allowed, are absolutely everywhere. One night, after eating burgers from a little corner shop that left us a bit upset in the stomach, I tried to read Guillaume an Icelandic myth from our guide book. Every name and location in it reduced us to giggles, and after a paragraph, to tears, as my tongue tripped again and again over unpronounceable words. But hearing it flow effortlessly from the mouths of amused locals makes one feel as though they are surrounded by elves or vikings. In fact, language has changed so little over the years that it is said if Leif Eriksson were to land in Iceland today, he could communicate with the locals with little to no difficulty. Linguistically, it is like traveling back in time to hear this language spoken.
By the time Guillaume arrived, the sun had already set and the sky was once again the dusky deep navy blue it
had been when I had arrived 10 hours earlier. Seeing him again after so long apart was really wonderful, words cannot describe. Hand-in-hand, we set out to explore the town and find something to eat.
Food in Iceland is... edible. They do have some lovely yogurts and dark, malty breads, but this being winter, there was very little fresh anything. Our first night I had a nice hearty Icelandic lamb soup/stew that I quite enjoyed, but Guillaume is currently vegetarian, so there wasn't really anything on the menu (or any menu during our 10 days here) that he could eat. He made do with sides and caved to eating fish once or twice, but for the most part survived on breads, yogurts and cheese. So vegetarians beware, there will be very few options for you. Vegans, as usual, would have to do their own cooking entirely and even that will be difficult given the price and limited availability of fruits and veggies. The prices are high but not shocking for someone coming from Paris ($25/main course at a restaurant, $6-8 lunch hotdogs and hamburgers). The quality though is not at all what you would get for that price in
Christmas village
Lit up just like a postcard! France, and for that I was disappointed. No matter how much I told myself I was prepared for an adventure that would not include culinary delights, the reality still stung. I love good food, but my budget and the season wouldn't allow for it this time around. For 10 days, the only vegetables I saw were almost-white hot-house tomatos, iceburg lettuce and cucumbers. Not ok for a Californian, the minute we landed back in Paris it was straight to the markets and salads all around! But I get ahead of myself, let's get back to Iceland.
We spent 3 lovely days in Reykjavik seeing everything we wanted to see, as well as quite a lot of the inside of our room and that 2-person jacuzzi tub. The church with the view over the city, the Icelandic cultural museum, the shopping streets and city pools. Everything was lovely and charming, but I felt the need to get on and out. I'd been looking at photos of the Icelandic country side and it was for that natural beauty that we had come, so as much as we loved Reykjavik, we had to move on.
Day 4 was the Golden Circle.
We picked up a subaru 4wd from SadCars and were on our way. (I don't know why they have such a depressing name, I can only assume it means something better in Icelandic? The cars are cheap because they are used vehicules, so not in pristine condition. Ours worked just fine, though by the time we returned it both headlights had burned out). The roads were ice. 100% covered in ice, with snow flurries blowing across, but man-oh-man are snow tires and 4wd amazing! We were just fine driving the speed limit in the pre-dawn light of 8am Reykjavik December. We left the city in what (I learned) is called nautical dawn, that is when there is enough light to make out the horizon, but not much more than that. We arrived at Thingvellir national park (the first stop on the Golden Circle) during civil dawn, which is when there is enough light to read and work by, but the sun has not yet cleared the horizon. Actual sunrise/dawn occurred sometime while we were at the visitors center, but it was hard to tell because it was a very cloudy day so we never actually got to see the sun
The beginning
Where the rift between the continents begins to be visible. at all anyways.
Thingvellir national park spans 2 continental plates and is growing at a rate of anywhere from 5mm a year to 3cm a year, depending on which guide book you pick up. There is a path which leads you down the chasm between the two plates. We were straddling the two continents, literally here, as well as figuratively with our international relationship. It really was the perfect metaphorical choice for our place to honeymoon! We walked between the cliffs of two different continents in silence as snow began to fall. Cold though it was, we were bundled tight and my camera was safe in it's Dicapac, so we trudged on to the waterfall. This was my first time seeing a frozen waterfall, and it was almost as amazing as I thought it would be. I say almost because of the lack of light, no sun-spun rainbows glinting off of icy prisms, but weather aside, it was pretty neat. Icicles as big as people covered the surrounding rocks, and even in the dim perma-twilight of near-arctic winter, you could see that the ice was strong and blue. The photos don't really do it justice, but perhaps you can
get an idea. We would have stayed longer to soak it all in if we weren't so frickin' cold. By this time the snow had really started to come down, and though my shoes and coat were made for this, my pants and gloves had started soaking in the snow. So we hurried on to the little village, took the requisite photos of the church, and then got back to the car ASAP.
The next stop on the Golden Circle is Geysir and it's surrounding attractions. Geysir is a geyser, the geyser from which all others derive their name. Apparently it was a pretty big deal. It is no longer active today due to ignorant tourists tossing stones and other refuse in it in an attempt to make it go. Any rudimentary knowledge of how a geyser works would clue you in that this is exactly the opposite thing to do for any geyser, but I guess back in the day they didn't have handy signs all over the park explaining the geothermal processes behind the sights. As it is, Geysir's little brother, Stoker, is still going strong with eruptions every 10-15 minutes. We saw it go 2-3 times
Geysir
The progression of an eruption. while we were there. Pretty neat, and extra exciting due to the huge pat of ice where the steam blows from the eruption. Walking up to it the first time, I got stuck on the ice, not having enough traction to move forwards or backwards. A slight incline on the ground meant I was slowly slipping towards the water that was soon to erupt. Seeing people gather also meant the eruption was coming, and here I was in the path of the spray in -10 weather unable to get out of the way. Luckily Guillaume found a less slippery path and was able to pull me to safety just in time. Needless to say, I don't have pictures from that first eruption and we stuck around to properly witness another.
From Geysir it's on to Gulfoss, the "golden waterfall" (why everything is "Golden" beats me, everything seemed pretty monochrome white and grey to me, but of course that was the season). It's a big waterfall. It was almost nighttime (4 pm) by the time we got there, so the photos and views weren't that great, again due to the light.
On the road back to Reykjavic was when
Aurora
This was pretty much the extent of the Northern Lights for us. Next time we'll head farther north, where they say the sky is clearer and it's easier to see them. we saw it: The Aurora Borealis, the Northern Lights. This was to be our only sighting of them this entire trip, and I must say it was rather anticlimactic. These were not the dramatic "dancing lights" of which I'd read, but rather an indefinite haze, an undefined luminous blur, barely visible to the naked eye. My eyes were peeled, because this was something I'd dreamed of seeing since.. well, ever, and so as we crested the mountain above Selfoss, I told Guillaume to pull over. There was something funny about the sky. There were the usual clouds, lit from below by the lights of Reykjavic. Glowing in that yellow way that city clouds will glow, and yet, just above them was a fuzzy... different.. kind of glow. It looked like high-altitude whispy clouds might look if slightly illuminated by a more blue-green tinted light. It was a sort of luminous mist, but not that luminous. About on par with the city-lit clouds, actually. The photos here show what a 6 second exposure captures, but not at all what the human eye sees. These were the famous lights, but not on one of their spectacular nights. The glow slowly faded and
Frozen roads
The black is ice, the white is also ice. we got back in the car with a strong desire for more.
The next morning we got up, once again before the sun (this was the first time in my life I'd spent over a week consistently waking up before the sun!) and headed off, this time with no plans of returning to the city that night. We followed the signs out of town, and before we knew it we were off along highway 1, the ring road. As you can see by the pictures, these weren't the best of driving conditions. Where you see road is actually ice. When getting out of the car, we were surprised at having to penguin-walk, as the car handled so well in these conditions! To anyone planning a winter iceland trip: 4wd is necessary. They will rent you non-4wd cars for very cheap, but you will have an awful time getting anywhere (We passed a french couple in such a car on our golden circle day. They looked terrified as they tried to get to Thingvellir at 20 mph while being passed by giant 4x4's every few minutes).
Along the road, sites are marked by a sort of ornamented square/hashtag with
curls. As such, it is very easy to navigate this country sans guide. We stopped to see examples of Viking habitation at Keldur. Towards the end of our limited daylight we came to the beginnings of the volcanic sandurs and dramatic mountains which create them. Sandur is an icelandic term used to describe the great flat expanses created by sudden glacial flooding provoked by volcanic activity. The mountains rise suddenly from these flat lands and waterfalls tumble off their dramatic cliffs before flowing through the sandur to the sea. The first waterfall to greet you in this land is Seljalandsfoss, easily viewable from the ring road. One can walk 360 degrees around the fall if one so desires, but in winter the path is pure ice and impassable without crampons and a sense of adventure. I only had one of the two requirements, so kept my viewing to the front 180 degrees. We took our pictures and tried to press further into the park. We wanted to follow another a road to another point of interest that had been marked, but even with out 4wd the road eventually proved unpassable. Even if we never made it to the point of
interest, we did get some incredible mountaintop views. And then it was on to Vik.
Vik is the southern-most town on mainland Iceland. A small community of roughly 300 people, this was our destination for the night. We had our choice of lodgings, either the Vik hotel or the Vik hostel. The man at the hotel didn't understand English, French, or google-translated Icelandic (We think he might have been Czech??), so the hostel it was! After a dinner of Icelandic seared fish and iceburg lettuce salad at the restaurant located at the tourist office (the other "restaurant" in Vik is located in the petrol station), we made our way up the hill to the friendly little Vik guesthouse hostel. Prices were high, considering that this was a hostel, $115 for the two of us for a night. Keep in mind that these are off-season prices that will be even higher in summer. Seeing as the hotel was even more expensive and didn't seem to know how to communicate, we stuck with the hostel. We later learned from a friendly bartender that the Vik hotel had recently been bought by Eastern European interests who had almost immediately fired all the
local staff and brought in two of their own. A grave offense in a small town, so I'm glad that we didn't support their business after all.
The reason Vik was on our radar was due to it's famous black sand beaches. We headed out after a wonderful full Icelandic breakfast, once again before the sun had cleared the horizon. The day was cold and blustery, clouds hanging low and wet, but graciously holding in their snow while we cavorted on the volcanic beaches of the North Atlantic. The sand was coarse and black as black, the sea, cold and enraged. Waves taller than Guillaume crashed and sucked at the beach, everything in monochrome white-black-grey. This was probably one of my favorite photo days, and picking my favorites to post was hard, but here you are. We spent much of the afternoon exploring the various beaches and rocky outcroppings of the area before continuing on to the next destination, going by a place where every traveler has left a stone in passing. The cairns cover the hill, as apparently to add to them brings travelers good luck. Naturally we left stones too before carrying on.
The last few
So many cairns
The black rocks in the background on top of the hill were apparently a house in the past that was burned down by an enemy family. In remembrance of the family that lived there, travelers leave cairns for good luck. daylight hours were spent in Kirkjubaejarklauster (try saying that three times fast!) learning about volcanic activity in the region and taking a lovely walk up their mountain. At first the solitude and dramatic views were wonderful, but after passing the lake the path got lost under the untouched snow and with light fading fast we began to worry a bit. Wrong turns took us through marshes that ended abruptly with volcanic cliffs falling away for a hundred meters or so below us. Guillaume was cursing the fact that he'd left his survival shovel back at the car (he'd dreamed of having to spend the night buried in the snow... I did not share his ambitions). As the sun sank below the horizon we found a small stream with markers along it and were able to make our way safely down and back to the town where we relaxed in their public hot pools. Though K-kj-klauster was lovely, we decided to cover a bit more road before bed and headed on to the Gurthi guesthouse to prepare for our big Ice day.
Ice day. Ice day began with a stop at Jokulsarlon, glacier lagoon. Formed where Vatnajokul melts into a
salt-water lagoon with only a small opening to the sea, Jokulsarlon is on any Iceland traveler's must-see list. Icebergs thousands of years old float in eerie glory on still, clear water. I'd seen photos and figured that they must have been edited or manipulated to show ice that blue, but as we cleared the hills from the parking lot I saw a scene straight out of my arctic imagination. The ice was indeed as crystal blue as in the photos, creaking and groaning with the slow movements of tidal forces. Photographers with thousand-dollar equipment peppered the shore, all eyes (and telephoto lenses) trained on the ancient accumulation of ice. I ran around with my Sony NEX and did my best to capture the magic of that place. We also amused ourselves by jumping around on the mini-glaciers near the shore, as photographers with more serious things to do regarded us disdainfully. (It must be said, the ice on which we played was not the ancient icebergs of the lagoon, but rather the crust of winter ice that would be gone come summer). We were there and hour, and would have stayed much longer had we not had reservations for the
next ice tour.
After much research, I had decided we were going to go on an ice cave tour. We both wanted to see the Vatnajokul glacier, the largest ice-mass on the European continent, but at this time of year tours were limited. It is not really possible to see the glacier without a guide, as it is only accessible by huge 4x4 vehicles, and you wouldn't really want to go on your own anyways unless you REALLY know your way around ice. In winter it can be especially dangerous, as huge 60 meter crevasses can be disguised under a thin layer of ice or snow which unsuspecting travelers might find themselves falling into all too suddenly and easily. Because of the increased risk and lower tourist traffic, many tour operators do not offer glacier treks in winter. There is one tour though that is only offered in winter. Localguide's (www.localguide.is) ice cave tour for photographers. I'd seen photos of iceland's ice caves on travel-porn sites. You know the ones, "100 places to see before you die", "15 most romantic get-aways" and the like, filled with gorgeous photos of remote and colorful destinations. The ice caves glow blue and
cold, lit by the lone adventurer's headlamp as a geothermal-heated river flows around them. I wanted to see that, and I'd found just the man to take me there.
Einar Rúnar Sigurthsson is an ice-enthusiast who has been guiding tours to and around Vatnajokul since 1994 and he is the only one who takes people into the ice caves. Regular tour companies don't go to the caves for many reasons, one being that they are only accessible in winter when many companies are closed, another being that one really must know the ice and it's many moods in order to safely guide people through them. Einar knows ice. He goes early every morning before a tour to check the water flow and the ice, making sure caves can be safely accessed and finding the best paths in and out. Routes into the caves can change daily, depending on weather or volcanic activity below the glacier. As it was, we could not penetrate very far into the Crystal Cave this day due to a higher-than-normal water flow, probably due to increasing geothermal activity far within and beneath the glacial mass. Though we couldn't go far into the cave, what we
GlacierWorld!
No one was here, there is a box to leave a donation and you get changed in the little hut there. Getting changed is the hardest part, because the hut isn't heated and then you have to walk in your swimsuit all the way to the pools. Brrr! did see was fantastic. Einur helped us strap on crampons before leading us up onto the glacier and through a crevasse down to the muddy river before carrying us each over a section of the rushing waters. Once inside we had all the time we wanted to take pictures and soak in the majesty of being within many millennia's worth of ice. Of course we had to lick it (it tasted cold and metallic). After an hour or more of photos, we all hiked back to the HUGE 4x4 that had brought us there and headed back to the localguide offices.
Guillaume and I wished to head a bit farther east before turning back towards Rykjavik. We went towards Hofn until we hit GlacierWorld in Hoffel for a lovely end-of-day soak alone at the foot of the glacier. As much as I want to see Iceland when it's green and summery, it was something special to be completely alone in these heated pools tucked into the foot of glacier-carved mountains. As we left to head back towards the west, we waved goodbye to the glacier and a grazing herd of reindeer.
Driving back towards Reykjavik in a winter
gale, we were reminded again of how lovely the Icelandic people are. The whole island has a small-community feel to it, as though everyone knows everyone. We stopped in the restaurant/gas station/store in Kirkjubaejarklaustur, glad to have some warmth and a pause from driving on the ice-road in a raging storm. We spoke with the lovely girl working the counter, and she was very concerned with our plan of getting back to Reykjavik. "You can't make it in this weather!" She started speaking with other people coming into the store, asking about weather updates and road closures (I assume, this was all conducted in Icelandic). People came over to advise us and tell us about road conditions. Everyone said we shouldn't try to go past Vik, as the road out of the town there winds up along a cliff, with a sheer drop-off on one side and in this weather it was surely going to be closed. She asked if we had reservations for the night, we said no. She disappeared for a moment, coming back to tell us that she had called the hostel in Vik and that they were expecting us in a few hours, once we headed
Vik hostel
Just a darling place to stay, and a really wonderful breakfast spread! out from here. She wanted to make sure we would be safe and have a place for the night. Our plight seemed to be the talk of the entire marketplace, and seeing as the marketplace was the only open thing in town, I guess I can say we were the talk of the town for the duration of our dinner. Absolutely lovely people. We ended up making it just fine to Vik, but were very glad to not be going any further as we had been nearly blown off the road a few times on the way there.
The next morning we headed out towards Reykjavik and our final day in Iceland. The day I had set aside for the Blue Lagoon. The Blue Lagoon is the definition of a tourist trap, but it's one to which you really must succumb. It's amazing. Really expensive, and entire tourist compound built up around the pool, just begging for your money. But so worth it. Entrance cost around $35 just for entry (which is what Guillaume did), and then there were package options starting at $56 (which is what I did), including things like slippers, a towel, a robe, a drink
and a special algae mask or volcano scrub along with the entrance bracelet and locker. Hey, when in Rome... pay exorbitant fees for pampering! In hind-sight, I would have been fine with the basic entry, but the robe was luxurious and I hadn't brought a towel with me anyways. Once we had made it through the lines and locker rooms and naked showering (although the Blue Lagoon offered individual shower stalls for this portion. I guess compromises on Icelandic culture are made when tourist dollars are on the line), we went out to the pools. Originally a waste-water site for a near-by power plant, the Blue Lagoon started when the locals discovered that the water was perfect temperature for bathing. It is also full of silica and other minerals, meaning it really draws everything out. You're skin will feel tight and clean, your hair will be super dry and squeeky. If you have long hair, I would recommend either a shower cap or not getting it wet, though they also say if you comb conditioner in it and leave it in, that can work too. Took me about a week of daily washing to get mine back to normal. So
Icelandic handicrafts
Wool hats taken to a whole 'nother level. not good for hair, but great for skin! We played in the warm waters, putting mud masks on each other and enjoying the resort until darkness started to fall. This was when it went from a tourist-pool-resort to full-on magical. The temperatures dropped as the sky went pink and purple. The cooling air meant that more and more steam was condensing into fog above the pools. When we had arrived, we had seen the entire pool complex easily from the deck. Now, in the water, I couldn't see more than 4 feet away in any direction. The sounds seemed muffled and by going out into the pool a ways, we felt as though we were totally alone. In the mist, under the dark arctic sky.
Our last night was spent in a guesthouse/B&B in Keflavik, the town which hosts the airport just outside of Reykjavic. We dined in a Thai restaurant before retiring to our room to pack up our bags and get some sleep before our flight. The next mornings departure was slightly delayed, but uneventful. We both left knowing that this little island had burrowed its way into the warmth of our hearts, and one day, we
will return.
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