ADVENTURE 3 - ICELAND
It’s 7am on Tues 7th March. I’m trying to type quietly in my bed in Hotel Fron in fear of awakening the Boss. Anyway, this is the start of day two of this adventure or the first full day, today we are checking out the Golden circle, but I’ll get into that later.
We set off on Sunday just before Liverpool hammered United 7-0 in the FA cup. After a quick catch up with Smokie and Kelly (friends and dog sitters) we hit the road to Dublin airport Premier Inn Premier Inn was dead on. After a few hours hanging out at the airport, a lot of which I spend in the bog as my guts weren’t right, we got on the plane. The flight was good, and the plane was fancier than the usual easyJet flight as we had our own screen.
As we came into land the landscape was very different but stunning. Barron, dramatic, brown and white with the occasional pocket of thermo steam billowing out of the ground. Once we landed and got into a terminal shuttle the fridge like crisp air was obvious and very fresh. We decided to hire a car for the duration at the trip. Love this because that means total freedom to explore. We hopped into our shitty Toyota Ago and headed toward Reykjavik 45K away. It felt like humans haven’t been here long and the land outside of the road was just unclaimed, I guess cause it’s no good for farming. I mean you can be sure if humans could use it for financial gain, they would. We parked up near the hotel and found a wee cafe that only sold 2 meals but booth veg. Perfect and beaut, my guts needed a rest from shit food, so I was happy. We found our hotel and checked in, it was in a perfect location, clean and cosy, the corridors smelt of weed which I also quite liked. We chucked our bags in and spent the rest of the days walking round Reykjavik. A nice city with quaint buildings and a nice safe but bustling vibe with the backdrop of some daunting cold dramatic mountains. We bought our tickets to the Blue Lagoon from a tourist info spot and looked at other options.
We went out and got soap in a bap…. Amazing idea and hit the spot, oh and a Gull beer. It was all good apart from the price of everything!
We jumped back in the car and tried to find the Northern Lights. A hopeless mission given it had got cloudy, but we did find a cool lighthouse called Grotta. After that we drove about getting lost on the outskirts and just decided to head back to catch some zzzz’s.
It’s about 8am on the 8th March, I’ve just tip toed out of the room and I’m sitting eating breakfast. Loads done yesterday! The Golden Circle Day and Northern Lights Tour (kinda)! After brekky we got on our bus with Thor our ex-teacher guide for the day. Once all on board we set off towards stop 1 of 3, Pingvellir National Park to check out the North America and Europe tectonic plates tear away from each other at an astounding rate of 18mm / year! Crazy to think that the perceived innocents of this recently killed 10s off thousands of people in Turkey and Syria in an earthquake about 6 weeks ago. En route Thor told us some cool facts about life in Iceland. Too many to write about. On arrival I went for a stump around trying to get as far away from the tourists as possible in the short time. We came across a tiny church and graveyard, crossed freezing rivers and walked through the actual crack in the Earth’s crust. However, time ended quick, and we had to scuttle back to our tribe of ants. Back on the road to Geysir with the usual Barron and dramatic vistas on each side as far as the eye could see. You couldn’t miss Geysir with the billowing steam pumping out of the grass. There is about 5 steaming pools of water and loads of shallow, flowing hot looking trickles and streams. The main Geysir is currently dormant but the second biggest didn’t let us down. Every 3 – 10 minutes with no warning it would erupt firing rotten egg smelling plums of steam 15 meters into the air. Quick toilet stop and back on the bus. The final stop was Gullfoss a massive waterfall on the River Hvita River. No words can describe this place. The power of nature at its best, although we learnt that in the 19th century thanks to the protests of a young woman called Sigriour Tomasson the plan to dam the site by foreign investment was scrapped. I kinda felt she done them a favour as many would have been killed surely in that attempt. Girl Power! Also, good for the economy, by not doing this surely out ways the positives of doing it, economically speaking. We really noticed the temperature at this point, the wind had picked up, it was proper cold.
After the tour we had 3 hours to kill before the Northern Lights Tour. We drove back and eat in an Italian, I had a nice Pizza and Emma loved her pasta dish. The glass of red I had was beaut and I learnt that Chianti was an Italian Red wine.
After a quick rest and episode of Outerbanks we joined the Northern Lights Tour. This was kinda uneventful. Technically it went down as an ‘unsuccessful’ tour despite good forecasts but there definitely was Northern Lights but best seen through a lens. In fact, the highlight was (despite the tour guides advice not to do this in the dark) to find and climb down into Leioarendi Lava Cave. Thankfully I brought my head torch. It was a proper cool cave with mystical icicles hanging off the roof and walls. It was so well formed the cave looked man made. I went about 20 metres in and despite 2 yanks going further in I thought better of it and turned back. I didn’t like the thought of Emma repeating at my funeral, ‘I told him not to!’ Anyway, we hung out for about 90 minutes and caught some faint signs but nothing to really get excited about.
Blue Lagoon Day, wow! At the entrance car park to the Lagoon, I tried to put the spare on the car as we had a puncture, but the nuts were too stiff, so we decided to sort it out after. The changing area was spot on with state-of-the-art showers and lockers and surprisingly it didn’t appear busy and if it was the facilities handled it with ease. You enter the pool from inside, so you don’t even have to brave the cold. The blue steaming water was bath warm, an absolute treat like no other. It was a lot bigger than I thought with loads on nooks and crannies, you could easily find a section for yourselves. There was also steam rooms and saunas you could use. Emma and I enjoyed exploring it all and it was great for people watching. We stayed for near 3 hours, had a beer in the pool and a face pack. The Blue Lagoon is one of those attractions that isn’t over hyped it was honestly incredible and an absolute must on the bucket list. The puncture got sorted and, on the way home we stopped for some local food, a Pizza Hut. Then back to the hotel for an early night.
Coast Tour. Up and out by about 9am and headed straight for Vik right at the bottom of the Island via a coffee in Selfoss with its beautiful rivers. Vik was the first town that we had seen that was nice with a beautiful hilly back drop, right on the coast and full of nice buildings and a quaint wee church perched on a hill above. After a veg burger and vegan lasagne we dandered over to the black beech. It was cool, and it really was identical to an Atlantic beech except the sand was proper black. The next stop back towards the city was Reynisfjara. This was a basically like our own Giants Causeway but with Black Sand and a cathedral like cave towering above the basalt columns. Next stop was Dryholaey the Southern tip of Iceland with its daunting cliffs and sea arches. More stunning scenery, I mean the photos explain this better than I can in words but even the photos don’t do it anywhere near justice. That was the last coastal stop. Next up… The Solheimajokull glacier. I was particularly keen to see this as I have never seen one before. Off road 1 onto the 211 up to the visitors a car park, from there we followed a path that lead to the looking point which you could observe the glacier is all its glory but this wasn’t enough, thankfully there were a few tourists that had hopped the rope and walked down to the glacier lagoon (nearly formed in 2011) and all the way to the retreating glacier itself. We walked right up the glacier. What the pictures don’t show is the echoing movement and cracks off ice as if it were alive and slowly wakening from a long hibernation. It was quite daunting and made me feel vulnerable and pathetic when it comes to the power of nature that Iceland is so good at reminding you. Also, the Glacier Ice at the edges looked cool as you could see the many air bubbles trapped, presumably from many centuries ago about to be released back into the air. Next stop not far along route 1 was Skogar waterfall. This was my favourite waterfall; it was symmetrical with a good contrast with the green the water and the newly formed ice from the spray. We both commented on how you could get as close as you wanted, something which would never be allowed in our pampered conservative part of the world. There was steep twisting steps to allow you to view the waterfall from the top. Also sat just above the waterfall was the 2010 Eruption site from Eyjallajokull that messed the world up for a few weeks and stranded people all over the globe. We set off to the last stop of the South Coast DIY excursion Seljalandsfoss waterfall just off the main road. To be honest whilst very impressive we were kinda uninspired due to Gullfoss on the Golden Circle and Skogar. We took a snap from the car and zoomed on, how spoilt were we already.
Summary:
Go to Iceland, it’s a must see. Book your flight and hotel separately and hire a car (if you can afford it get a better one) for the duration and plot your own trips. All of the above is a must see and can be done on a budget if you don’t get sucked into booking individual tours. Barron, Harsh, Otherworldly, Stunning, Powerful and Mother Nature are the words I’d use to describe this place. There is so much more to do in Iceland, we crammed as much as we could in and if I had the same time again, I wouldn’t change it but we covered about 15% of what this place offers.