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Published: September 24th 2009
Church at Vik
Iceland's southern-most point, half way along our 'semi-ring road' journeyIt is partly the ominous landscapes, and partly how remote and untouched everything feels that makes Iceland feel like it must be the last place on Earth. I have never seen a place look as beautiful in overcast weather as Iceland does. Threatening clouds and a dark and stormy sky seem appropriate for a land covered in lunar-esque rocks, where steam randomly billows out of the ground. At times we felt like we were on the moon, but then the sun would come out and we realised it was Earth, but in it's most dramatic form. Incredible waterfalls, boiling mud pits, volcanic islands rising out of the ocean, glacial icebergs floating off to sea, and of course beautiful Icelandic horses, all played their part in making this one of the most amazing places we've been.
Have I run out of adjectives yet? Here's a few more - slow, snail-like, freaking painful. But then, when you chose to take a budget airline I guess you should expect some of this! We drove to Berlin for a late night flight to Reykjavik which in itself was OK but getting our
There She Blows!
Steph and Dahlia at Geysir bags was another matter! (Slow, snail-like, freakin painful!)
Our plan was to start in the south west and drive to the east coast and back via the southern loop of the famous Ring Road (plus a few detours north and south along the way). Our first stop Reykjavik was more like a large fishing town than a capital city... only 120,000 people, which is really just an Albury-Wodonga with an extra Wodonga (not that you really want an extra Wodonga). And it has a definite maritime feel to it, possibly aided by the fact we spent much of our time in Reykjavik around the dock area trying to finally make a whale watching cruise happen. (We had booked tours in both Tromso, Norway and Hermanus, South Africa only to be thwarted by bad weather.) It turns out that a baby is no problem since there is a large indoor section on the boats, but once again the stormy weather was. So we are 0/3 at attempted whale watching. 😊 Instead we spent the day taking in the town - checking out the shops, the famous Hallgrimskirkja Church (unfortunately under scaffolding), some parks with some ridiculously massive ducks, and probably
most interestingly the 871+/-2 Settlement Museum. It's brand new building built around the excavated foundations of a house dug out of volcanic ash dated top 871 AD (give or take 2 years!)
After staying that night in Reykjavik we started our trip east, heading inland to 2 of Iceland's most famous landmarks: Gullfoss (the waterfall), and Geysir (the geysir!). At first we thought it was akin to naming a dog 'Dog' but discovered that this is the oldest one in the world so it became the generic term (it's based on the Icelandic word for 'erupt'). Geysir for the most part is just a hole in the ground that you can walk right up to, yet it explodes fantastically every 5 minutes with boiling water shooting up 70 metres in the air. Pretty impressive when you are only 5 metres from the origin! The funniest bit is watching everyone waiting with cameras between eruptions, and getting more and more stressed as time goes on. 😊 Gullfoss is about a 10 minute drive from there, during which we had our first of many encounters with the beautiful Icelandic horses (we had to wait from them to cross a bridge). Gullfoss
is an awesome waterfall where the Hvita River flows into a staircase-like canyon. It has rock ledges in places that you can out walk onto and feel like you are standing in the middle of it. Nothing else to say - it's just awesome.
From there we drove south to the port town of Thorlakshofn for the evening car ferry to Heimaey (the biggest of the Westman Islands, just off the south coast of Iceland). We'd been on car ferries several times, but this was easily the worst. 3.5 hours of waves so big that we would occasionally see the ocean directly out the front window - and we were on the 4th floor. Still, definitely worth it as the Westman Islands were just about the highlight of the trip - and not just because our full day there was also Steph's 29th birthday. 😊 It is a series of about 15 islands and 30 skerries (rocks too small to count officially as islands) created over the years from volcanic eruptions, including one that only appeared in the 1960's!
The islands' history is rather dramatic, with several pirate raids capturing the entire population into slavery and of course
the volcanic eruptions. The most recent of which was in 1973 when Eldfell erupted for 5 months causing the whole island to be evacuated. 400 homes (a third of the township) were destroyed and they are now excavating an ash covered street and calling it "Pompeii of the North". It's still a work in progress but as you walk down the 'street' you can see chimneys and into the inside of some very black kitchens. On the upside, the eruption increased the size of the island by 20%! We spent the morning exploring this colourful new part; full of red rocks, black sand, a dramatic blue and white coastline and views of the bright green headlands. The afternoon we headed to the southern headland of Storhofdi - meant to be the windiest spot in Europe with only 4 calm days on average a year. And somehow we managed to pick one of them!. I can't even describe how incredible this was to walk around this island. Despite how much we have seen in the last few years, our jaws were continually dropping. Hopefully the pictures do at least some justice to this place. The only sad part of the island
was that we saw no puffins - in the past, tens of thousands of puffins were on the island at this time of year for puffling season, but the last few years they haven't been coming. The only puffins we saw were on menus 😞 with the possible exception of one bird bone Steph discovered.
The next day we were back to the mainland after a much more gentle ferry crossing, and we continued east along the southern coast - a drive full of fairytale waterfalls, valleys and horses as we headed to our accommodation at Skogar. The first waterfall was Seljalandsfoss and a total extreme to the low, powerful Gullfoss. Seljalandsfoss is an incredibly tall and narrow waterfall that you can actually walk behind (if you're happy to get drenched!). Instantly we both recognised it from an episode of The Amazing Race years ago. The second waterfall, Skogafoss is exactly the sort of waterfall you'd imagine from a movie, where a nice gentle stream that you are paddling along all of a sudden becomes a mighty waterfall without warning. From almost any angle where we stood there was such an incredible picture perfect rainbow from all the mist.
At Skogar we were about half way along the south coast, and continued east to Skaftafell National Park, home of Europe’s biggest glacier, Vatnajokull. Obviously with Dahlia, hiking the glacier was not an option, but we didn't feel like we were missing out having had that chance in Norway 2 years ago. This glacier was the scene of our little angel’s finest moment on tour where she had an absolute meltdown at the foot of the glacier for no apparent reason. (Although she is a bit of an environmentalist and we had just been reading about how far the glacier had retreated in the last decades.) Another 1 hour east was our ultimate reason for the south coast journey - Jokulsarlon. Here intense blue icebergs break off the glacier and gather in the harbour before floating out to sea. Wow! Standing a top the hill watching these massive things succumb gradually to the sea is a moment I will never forget. The only thing that would have made this better was if we could have watched it together - by this point of the trip Dahlia's hatred of the wind meant we were taking turns getting out of the
The Blue Lagoon
With the geothermal power plant in the background car and taking things in!
So with the bulk of our trip over we headed back along the south coast for our last full day. Along the way we stopped at Pingvellir, the ancient seat of Icelandic parliament over 1000 years ago, but today an estuary on straddling the North American and European tectonic plates. Between the other islands, waterfalls and icebergs we didn't really appreciate it enough at the time; it's only looking back at the photos I am now fully seeing how beautiful it is. Pingvellir must feel like the girl that comes 6th in Miss Universe! Definitely not in the running for Miss Universe however were the stinky mud pits of Krisuvik, south west of Reykjavik. If only you could smell a picture 😉 Oh yeah, we also stopped at Reykjavik for one last attempt at whale watching (nope - 0/4).
Finally we ended up at the Blue Lagoon, where tourists swim in milky blue 'geothermal seawater' produced from the nearby geothermal energy plant. The water is from 2000m below the surface and constantly around a temperature of 37 degrees. We were staying in the Blue Lagoon hotel - referred to as the 'clinic' -
which was altogether way too calming and controlled. It felt like at any moment we would be put into a straight jacket and given medication! The cool bit of staying in The Clinic was a private section of the lagoon, including an indoor bit where we could take Dahlia. She loved it!! Later that night we took turns going out and relaxing in the lagoon that had become steamy in the cold night air.
The next morning we walked over to main section of the lagoon which as a lot more touristy, and more like an amusement park than a mental institution (you decide which you'd prefer)... still unique though. Our last stop on the way to airport was this bridge we had read about, that allegedly straddles 2 continents. It marks the point where the European and North American tectonic plates officially meet. Actually it was totally underwhelming, but we'll forgive Iceland this one underwhelming feature in a small island that has so many other overwhelming attributes!
PS You need to click on the to see the second half of the photos!
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Noir
La vie en noir
Gorgeous pictures!