ICELAND!!!

Reykjavik at 2am

American and Eurpoean tectonic plates

Gullfoss Waterfall

Langjokull Glacier

Geysir

Solheimajokull Glacier

Glacier cone

Skogafoss Waterfall

View from Skogafoss Waterfall

Upriver from Skogafoss Waterfall

Behind Seljalandsfoss Waterfall

The Blue Lagoon

Leifur Eiriksson and Halldrimskirkja Church

Reykjavik

Perlan

Iceland – I never imagined that I would have such a great time there. I flew from Kuwait and met up with two friends from Chicago, Charlie and Dom. Easily the best vacation I’ve taken in a long time. And every great vacation must start with being arrested, right? Technically, Charlie and I settled out of court for smuggling but that’s just details. I guess I got a little excited that I would be able to drink for the first time since arriving in Kuwait. So both Charlie and I picked up two bottles of booze and a case of beer at duty free and walked towards the exit. Neither one of us knew but the Icelandic government only allows an individual to bring in one bottle and a 12 pack of beer. We couldn’t carry our suitcases, bottles, and beer together so the bottles went in the suitcases. I guess we were the poster children for smuggling walking by security so they stopped us and asked to scan our bags. Well, they found the bottles of booze that we were “smuggling” and said we would be fined. $80 later and a chat with an Icelandic police officer, we were a bottle short and on our way. (They just let us pay the tax on the beer and be on our way.) I didn’t feel so bad after they stopped a Norwegian couple behind us for having too many bottles of wine.

After that, the trip was fantastic. The first night, July 4th, we went out of a few beers. The bars close at 1:30am on weekdays and as we left the bar, the sun was down but it looked like sunset. I knew this was going to be fun.

Our first tour was the Golden Circle Super Jeep Tour. Our tour group couldn’t have been better. Three girls from DC, the UK, and Australia, respectively, two guys from the UK, and the three Chicagoans. We all ended hanging out the entire weekend and they really made the trip. Our first stop was Þingvellir. It is the location where the Icelandic parliament, Alþingi was founded in 930, which makes it the oldest known functioning parliament in the world. It is also the place where the American and European tectonic plates meet. These plates are moving apart at about 1 inch per year. You can see where the plates are moving apart.

The next stop was the Gullfoss waterfall. We stopped at a rest area type place with a little gift shop/restaurant for what the guide said was a 15 minute stop. There was a trail so we followed it and to our surprise found the waterfall. The guide didn’t tell us about it because we were planning on stopping at it later in the tour. The waterfall was amazing and I could have easily spent a day hiking around exploring different parts of the falls and river but we had to move on to the next stop, snowmobiling on Langjokull Glacier, the second largest glacier in Iceland.

Snowmobiling was the reason to sign up for this tour. I mean snowmobiling in July, how cool. I emailed the tour organizer to check if they provided cold weather gear for this part of the tour. Luckily for the guy from Kuwait, they did. But it wasn’t too cold except when we were snowmobiling. You could see little creeks forming on the glacier from the melting ice. It was awesome. We probably spent about 30 minutes on the glacier. The water was clear blue in some parts. Simply beautiful. The snowmobiling was fun too. I almost dumped the sled a couple times (and Dom) but luckily kept it upright. 30 minutes wasn’t enough.

After the glacier, we stopped by the Gullfoss waterfall again but didn’t spend much time. The last stop of the day was Geysir, the most of the famous geyser in Iceland. It erupts regularly every 5-10 minutes and there was a crowd of people, including me, just standing around the geyser with cameras waiting for it to erupt. The whole area had a pleasant eggy odor and the people that got sprayed by the geyser smelled even better. I didn’t touch the water of Geysir but did feel the water of one of the pools near it. It easily passed the hot test. Here is a video of the eruption (sorry but you’ll have to tilt your head or the monitor).

The next day, part of group went on other tours, but half of us went on walking tour the Solheimajokull Glacier. (On the way to the glacier, we drove past Mt. Hekla. It was once believed to be the entrance to Hell until two hikers went to the top and safely returned.) They call the Solheimajokull a glacier tongue which comes off of the mother glacier, the Myrdalsjokull ice cap, the fourth largest glacier in Iceland. (Follow the Myrdalsjokull ice cap link and you’ve just went on our tour, minus the glacier.) The tour provided crampons for your books and an ice ax and we were on our way up the glacier. The first part of the glacier was steep and we lost a couple members of the tour but the rest of us went on. I thought that this glacier would be similar to the Langjokull Glacier but it was very different. The glacier was dirty. Parts of it looked like ice and snow but parts of it looked like someone had dumped piles of dirt all over the ice. The piles were called glacier cones and we were told they get there because a glacier does not slide over the ground. Instead it is constantly cycling the ice from the bottom of the glacier to the top and vice versa and that is how it brings up the dirt. The cones looked like you could just wipe them away but they were really a dirt blanket over a solid ice peak. There were still little rivers on the glacier and you could fill up your water bottle in the standing pools of water. However, if you were stranded on a glacier, the guide said you couldn’t survive on the water from these pools because the water had no minerals. So whether you’re stranded on a glacier or the middle of the ocean, you still need an alternate water source.

We spent most of the day just hiking around the glacier, trying to avoid falling in a crevice, looking at the rivers and pools on the glacier. But my favorite part of the day was the little bit of ice climbing we did. The guide found a 30 foot hole in the glacier and let us all have a chance to climb down and back up. I’ll definitely do that again!

On the way back from the glacier, we stopped at two more waterfalls, Skogafoss and Seljalandsfoss waterfalls. The hike to the top of the Skogafoss waterfall was rough but the view from the top was worth it. And if you climbed a fence and hiked just a little more, there was another waterfall. Not as high but just as impressive. At the Seljalandsfoss waterfall, there was a trail that made a loop behind the falls. What an amazing country!

The city of Reykjavik reminding me a lot of a college town. The main street is Laugarvegur and was very similar to State St. at UW-Madison. We had read that people stayed home and partied until at least midnight because it’s very expensive to drink at the bars ($15 beers). We went out at 11pm on Saturday and it was almost a ghost town. But two hours later, the bars were packed and everyone was having a good time. By the time we walked home after 5am, the sun was well up in the sky. A lot different from a 5am night in Chicago.

Sunday, we hung out with two Icelandic friends we made, Bergþóra (aka Begga) and Thelma. Besides teaching us the right way to pronounce Reykjavik, they took us to the Blue Lagoon. The water is really an eerie shade of blue. It gets even more blue in the winter because the algae changes color with the temperature. The whole lagoon is created by the run off from the Svartsengi power plant nearby. It pumps geothermally heated water from a mile below the Earth’s surface. It is like a big hot tub, without the bubbles. If you get too close to where the water is dumped into the lagoon you could get burned. You can be sitting there content and all of a sudden a hot jolt of water hits and you have to move to cooler waters. There are other spa amenities at the Blue Lagoon like a sauna, massages, natural mud masks. A good place to spend a lazy Sunday.

Charlie and Dom had early flights on Monday which left me to explore Reykjavik alone before my flight. I checked out the Hallgrimskirkja Church and Perlan. The Halldrimskirkja Church is one of the most famous landmarks in Reykjavik. In front of the church is a statue of Leifur Eiriksson, donated by the US government. We should give out more gifts like this. Entrance to the church is free but you have to pay to go up in the tower. Well worth it as you could see over the entire city from there.

Perlan is a building constructed on top of hot water tanks for the city. Inside is an award winning restaurant and a Viking museum. Outside of Perlan is a manmade geyser that is modeled after the famous Geysir.

Just a short note about the place we stayed. It is called Room with a View which is an apartment building on the main street in Reykjavik. If you’re going to Iceland, I highly recommend staying there. Anyway, when I called to book a room, the guy who owned the place told me I should pay in $US and not a credit card. The reason? The rates on the website were posted in 2005. Since the dollar has gone down so much in the last 2 years, it would be cheaper to pay in dollars than a credit card which would give the current exchange rate. It saved me $100. Pretty much an example of the people I met there.

So you can probably tell by the amount I wrote and the pictures that I had a good time. It was depressing to come back to Kuwait but New Year’s 2008 in Reykjavik is on the table. Anyone up for it?