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Published: July 27th 2008
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Iceland was probably colonised on a dare. Literally, the only things there are volcanic rocks covered by ice. Actually, it's more like ICE. Well, that's the way it seems as you fly into the capital city Reykjavik. Placed directly above The Mid-Atlantic Ridge, Iceland is literally one gigantic lava field - well, a pretty cold lava field.
The first day that we were there we checked into our hotel (nice and central with a view of the harbour - and many a corrugated iron roof) and went for a walk. The intention was to do the lonely planet self guided tour. The reality was -2 degrees and a gale. This kind of thing makes you stop looking for the old schoolhouse (now converted to a cinema) and makes you start looking for a cafe. One cappuccino and a second attempt at walking later and we were beaten, retreating back to the hotel - not to emerge till the next day! Well, no, you see the hotel didn't have a restaurant and someone had to get dinner. I drew the short straw, though Cheri was holding them at the time - so I only have her say so on that matter.
Day 2 (Good Friday) was not just good, but great. We joined a coach for the Golden Circle tour which visits the major highlights. To get there though, we had to drive through some of the most bizzare landscape I've seen in my life. Massive lava fields where nothing grew, even though the lava had long since cooled to rock. Huge boulders with doors (Icelandic people belive that fairies live in them). Houses that are iced in during most of the year and are only accessible during summer - hence summer homes. The Mid Atlantic Ridge - which we actually drove over, meaning that in a sense we had driven on the bottom of the sea. Massive plains of ice, which bizarrely were punctuated with large pillars of steam.
We later found out that there is so much geothermal activity in Iceland that they use it for all of their heating, hot water and electricity. The hot water piped into houses actually comes direct from the ground - they don't have hot water cyclinders. Geothermal activity provides them with so much power they actually export it. Australian companies find it cheaper to dig Bauxite in Aussie, ship it
to Iceland for smelting and then ship it all the way back again for manufacture. Mind you what does this tell you about Iceland - their top three exports are power, vikings and Bjork.
Meanwhile, while you've been reading about landscape and geothermal activity, our coach has just arrived at a medium sized volcano. This one however has a lake inside - frozen naturally, and once sang upon by Bjork. In a way this kind of captures Iceland all in one go - if only there were vikings.
To get a good photo of Iceland's most famous waterfall Gulfoss you need to go to the viewing platform (naturally). To get there you have to walk across the car park and down the stairs. In any other country this would be easy. In Iceland it's covered in ice. And there's a cliff. And in case you forgot, there's also a waterfall. Needless to say that when I nearly fell over just getting out of the coach, I knew I had some fun times ahead. You have no grip on this kind of ice, refrozen melt making it more slick than a bowling alley, more downhill too. Mostly I just
sort of pushed off in a direction and kept going till I stopped. Luckily there were railings.
It was worth it in the end though, Gulfoss (the golden falls) are possibly the only bit of non heated water in Iceland that is not actually ice. Instead it rushes its way through a narrow ravine and down a 32m horseshoe drop. As it does it creates a beautiful golden raindbow which is superimposed on a background of ... ice (a recurring theme here).
Around lunch time we arrived in the Geysir hot springs area, home of Geysir. Geysir was the world's first geysir (well the first that was found anyway) and gave its name to all other found since. It's now dormant and like a grumpy old man it'll only perform when really, really in the mood. Fortunately, his upstart neighbour Strokkur shoots 20m in the air every 5 minutes or so. So once we got a photo and watched some Japanese tourists get soaked we were on our way.
To round the day off, I thought it might be a great idea to take in a museum. You see, Iceland is home to the world's only phalological
museum (penis museum to those of you who don't speak medical). Apparantly the curator has collected a large number of peni (penises might be plural for penis, however I think peni sounded better) ranging from the very small (from some kind of mouse) to the very large (blue whale). He hasn't got a human one, however he's had a few promised in certain people's wills. Interesting stuff huh? Well, I thought so, and heck why not? It's the only one in the world, and how often are you in Reykjavik? Unfortunately, for a place that should stick out like a ... ahem... anyway, it wasn't easy to find. Also, it's a little embarassing to ask the receptionist at the hotel for directions. Well, I asked anyway. He even rang them for us (it was in our guide book - I didn't go to Iceland prepared with the phone number of the penis museum), it turned out that the museum had relocated to the other side of Iceland. The receptionist told us this was a shame because he'd found the museum quite enlightening.
On Saturday we had a tour of Reykjavik which culminated in a rather amazing church. There was
no decoration inside the church (apparently religious art is against Lutheran beliefs) however this was made up for by the church itself (apparantly religious architecture is ok). Imagine someone tried to make a church that kind of looks like the pipes from a pipe organ. Out of stone.
Most of the morning though disappeared in a blur because of the afternoon. We went to the blue grotto. Essentially it's a large pool of effluent from the local power station. Since the power station is geothermal though, this means that the effluent is hot water. mmmm. Imagine a natural spa pool the size of 3 olympic swimming pools surrounded by a volcanic rock plain. An unexpected side effect of the power plant using seawater for their goethermal steam is that all the algae and tiny sea life die during the process and form a sort of silica mud - good for the skin we're told. Whether it was the warmth of the pool or the squishy mud we caked all over ourselves, who knows, but it was the most relaxed I've felt in my entire life.
On our last day we saw some more amazing waterfalls and went to
a museum run by an 87 year old man. It turned out that he had collected just about everything inside the museum himself. He also let us into an important fact about Iceland. It has only 2 resources: geothermal activity and ice. Nothing else. Nothing grows here (well, nothing bigger than grass). There just hasn't been the millenia of eroding soils etc. with no trees for wood, the most common building materials were driftwood, whales and turf. In fact, Iceland has a good history of importing all the resources that they need to survive, including the women. Though colonised by Norway, most Icelandic people have genetically more in common with the Irish. Think about it.
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