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Published: April 29th 2009
It's Freezing!
The view from our hotelWhoever said that Greenland was Ice and Iceland was Green was wrong. There is plenty of ice in Iceland. There’s a reason why they offer cheap flight and accommodation deals to Reykjavik in March, it’s bloody freezing!
Reykjavik itself is pretty small and there’s not a huge amount to see. But we were told that in the summer time when they have virtually 24hr sunlight, the city comes alive and they pretty much party 24/7. Unfortunately for us, it was not summer time. It was spring and the city was still a little dopey eyed coming out of winter. So after arriving and pretty much seeing what there was to see in an afternoon, we decided to take the well known “Golden Triangle” tour of the surrounding area.
Iceland is a geologists dream, there’s all sorts of seismic this and blowhole that - throw in a bit of ex volcanic who’s it’s and sulphur what’s it’s. It’s a pretty cool landscape, even cooler when you’re watching blowholes blow in the middle of an ice field.
One of the cool things that we visited was where the European and American tectonic plates meet. They’re separating by something like 2
inches a year (don’t quote me, it’s been a while since our trip!) so that Iceland is actually growing and will eventually split apart, apparently. The gorge where they meet is pretty amazing though, the water is absolutely crystal clear. Apparently people go diving in the gorge and it’s supposed to be spectacular. It’s also a constant 1 degree Celsius all year round so you have to wear a dry suit…think I’ll just watch the David Attenborough special.
We also got to visit a geothermal power station, it had only recently opened up and was still being constructed so wasn’t running at full capacity yet. It was quite amazing to wander around in there while everything was still shiny and new. It was in a pretty remote location and when it’s up and running it’ll only need something like a dozen people to keep it working on a day to day basis, everything is automated.
Being such a geothermal landmass all of their public transport (they don’t have any trains) runs on hydrogen and if you’re that way inclined you can buy a hydrogen car and receive fuel for free! It’s a shame we haven’t figured out how
Duckies!
On a frozen lake to harness the hydrogen from the air… Ah but what would happen to all the oil Barons??
Probably the highlight of our trip was our visit to the Blue Lagoon, it’s a spa retreat just outside of Reykjavik and we spent all of our last day there. It was looooverly…..At first we freaked out slightly because the Blue Lagoon is not a natural occurrence. The Blue Lagoon is actually a by product from the geothermal power plant that generates all of the power for Reykjavik. The water that is pumped out of the ground is used to generate electricity. Then the used water, which is considerably cooler at 40 deg C than when it is first pumped from the ground, is then allowed to run out into the natural rock formations surrounding the power plant. The natural rock formations are hardened lava from when a volcano once erupted there. And so formed the Blue Lagoon. It has changed slightly over the years but still looks pretty much the same. And the water that is discharged has white algae in it, which is deposited all around the lagoon. Apparently it’s wonderful for the complexion - well I don’t think mine
got any worse put it that way.
Reykjavik was cool the only down side being that they’re quite keen on eating the poor Mink Whale, which we continually politely declined. It’s probably not the most amazing place we’ve ever been to and it was super duper expensive, but still worth a weekend.
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