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Published: September 5th 2007
A week in Iceland, check. Our pocketboots are feeling a bit disheveled, but all in all, it was a lunar experience.
Ana connected with her Scandanavian roots, surrounded by toehead blond Icebabes, you could imagine the Vikings ravaging the island, rampaging on the rocks, as you were stripped of your $$$! Being on the edge of 2 massive plates, seeing earth boil up through the cracks, watching geysers gushing into the air spewing steamy waterfall spurts, the lunar landscape is awe-inspiring. We were told Iceland is green and Greenland is ice...so we thought the late summer in Iceland would be not too cold. Our meticulous packing was quickly tested for warmth & dryness, and barely passed.
Our first stop was in the Akureyri and the Lake Myvatan areas in the north. Grassy pseudocraters along the lakes edge were formed from explosions of steam as the red hot lava hit the cold water. Next came the hot-spot areas around the Krafla and Namafjall areas. The ubiquitous smell of sulfur in the air, yellow/orange/black/grey earth and torquiose blue water, steam blowing out of mini-volcanoes, bubbling mud pots, and the lack of any green life made it seem as we had traveled
back in time to when the earth was just big gaseous primordial soup. We then hiked through a shiny black lava field. It was a bit like the earth in its awkward teenage years...plaugued with pimples, built up pressure, and dark fields of depression. That night, after our 60 dollar soup and bread and 12 dollar beers, we headed to the Myvatan nature baths were we dipped in the geothermally heated natural blue. The water was an electric blue (from all the silica I think), and had spot so hot that we felt as if were were a frog being dropped the boiling pot of water. Along with the ice cold wind on our faces, and the late night sun, it was all a perfect ending to day of observing the earth where the crust is thin and the possibility of a volcanic eruption could occur at any moment.
The next day we drove up to the small fishing town of Husavik to go whale watching. As it was the end of the season, we only saw two species...the pilot whale and the milky whale. Both were kinda exciting, but both dave and I couldn't but help to laugh
at the ship full of tourists, looking out around the edge of a boat in almost freezing cold rainy weather, to get a quick glimpse of what simply looked like a big dolphin. They served us nice cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa on the way home, which made the whole thing well worth it.
We traveled back to Reykjavik the next day, stopping at the beautiful Gullfoss waterfall and Geysir.
Back in Reykjavik, we decided to spend Saturday night doing the famous "runter", which is basically a slow bar crawl through the streets, getting as drunk as possible, and spending enough money to support a small village in Africa for a month. To save on costs, we did as the locals, and bought a flask of whiskey at the liquor store to take swigs off of in between bars. Dave ran into his old friend Jordan, who is in the band Antibalas, an amazing Brooklyn band that happened to be headlining the Reykjavik Jazz Festival that night. He got us into the show at a cool venue called NASA. We danced into the night to great music inspired by Fela Kuti, and continued to drink and drink. Jordan
got us into the after-party upstairs where we talked to local Icelandic peeps about living and what makes Iceland so darn cool. After eating a gooey piece of pizza with hopes that it would absorb some of the alcohol in our poor little stomachs, we crawled back to our guesthouse at around 5:30 as the sun was just coming up. The all night light we had read about was already past. We slept till 3 oclock the next day, visited the strange Saga Museum, and ate deliciously expensive Indian food before our last nights sleep in Iceland.
Iceland is cold. and not so green.
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Gerty
non-member comment
great
I loved my vicarious trip to Iceland. the photos are great!! Thanks. Look forward to your next entry. G.