Viking longboat sculpture.
Reykjavik
With a grand total of 5 hours of sunlight per day, the miserable weather, constant shop closures (due to the New Years public holidays) and the serious lack of anything really exciting to do, I didn’t spend much time in Reykjavik. There wasn’t really anything to buy, do, or see (besides the church, which was covered entirely in scaffolding.) Reykjavik has a teeny tiny population – 202,000 in the greater metropolitan area, in a country of only around 300,000 people – so the ‘metropolitan’ area is no more built up than Noarlunga Centre.
I didn’t visit any ‘museums’ or ‘tourist attractions’ – I had intended to get to the Saga museum at some point, but there was always something better to do. They didn’t look particularly enlightening (lots of wax dummies and dioramas – cool to see when they’re historical and hundreds of years old, like in the Natural History Museum in New York, not cool when they’re made in the 80’s). Nor did I eat in any restaurants, drink in any bars, and buy from any shops other than souvenir kiosks and supermarkets.
I did walk around a bit, drink duty-free liquor at the hostel, and see the insane fireworks.
Murals in the grey capital.
However, Reykjavik is a pretty cool place – simply because Icelanders are cool people. It’s ludicrously clean, there’s hardly any graffiti, yet the people are quirky, individualist, pierced and dreadlocked. There’s very little of the capitalist angst we in the English-speaking West have. And they have a wicked sense of humour: take a t-shirt I saw, which had a picture of Britain’s PM, Gordon Brown, who recently used anti-terrorism laws in the UK to seize control of the assets and finances of Icelandic banks in England. The slogan reads: ‘Brown is the colour of poo’. Nice.
Speaking of financial meltdowns (and hey, I wouldn’t have been able to go to Iceland without it), the young of Iceland are not particularly fond of their finance ministers at the moment:
Protest over financial mismanagement by the government.
Shouting, screaming, flares and fire crackers. Wicked.
I lie: I did do one touristy thing. I had a Baejarius Beztu Pylsur – Icelandic hotdog, tragically Iceland’s national food. It was bizarrely nasty. Apparently Clinton bought one from this pylsur stand near the docks.
Pylsur!
Sunset lights up the snow capped mountains near Reykjavik.
I suppose the bonus of short days is you always see the sunrise and sunset. However, I actually only saw one (!) due to the cloud cover. Nevertheless it was stunning, and I wish I’d been on the other side of the city to see it.
Street in Reykjavik during sunset.
New Years in Reykjavik
Going to Reykjavik for New Years however, despite the weather, the lack of sunlight and lack of activities, was the best decision I could have ever made. The Icelanders do New Years celebrations properly. Their celebrations begin December 12 with the appearance of the first Yule Lad and end on the 6th of January. Between those times, fireworks begin to gradually appear more and more, with the peak the incredible craziness of New Years Eve.
The Right-Kitchen was the place to be (Germans, Belgians, Espanols, Icelanders, and I think there's a Norwegian or two).
Alice (English, but resident in Russia) and Fawn (China).
The solo travellers of Reykjavik City Hostel all banded together, mixed their vodka, and headed out to the nearby bonfire:
Bonfire near Reykjavik city Hostel.
Close up bonfire.
Kids with sparklers.
Fireworks over the bonfire.
Backpackers playing with sparklers on the Hostel roof.
We headed out to the church (the highest point in the centre of Reykjavik) at about 11:15 – at 11:30 the sky went crazy. The ‘official’ fireworks display was tiny – due to the financial difficulties. However, the insanity that we witnessed – three hours of continuous fireworks madness – came from private purchases all over the city. Seriously, it was a constant bang bang bang for that whole time, building up and then slowly petering out. It continued for the rest of my stay – every night there was someone somewhere setting them off. Apparently more was to come on the 6th (my last day was the 5th). Advice for anyone considering Iceland as a New Years destination: stay until the 6th, if at all possible.
Fireworks over the city.
It was bizarre to stand at the highest point in the city and look across the suburbs, at skies full of fireworks. I will never forget it.
Blue Lagoon and Golden Circle
'Recovery' - Blue Lagoon.
The two main tourist ‘must-do’s’ in Iceland are the Blue Lagoon, a lagoon created by the natural outflow of a geo-thermal power plant and is now a spa-resort, and the Golden Circle, a bus-loop taking you to Gullfoss (Golden Waterfall), Geysir (geysirs, duh) and Thingvellir (national park).
Blue Lagoon is as lovely as they say, only the day I went it was freezing and the wind was moving the water horizontally across the surface. It was terrible conditions – made worse by the obnoxious Australian tourists on holiday from London (why is it we have to export so many bogan racist fuck-heads to London instead of decent educated Australians?) I stayed 40 minutes and left. But the lagoon is bizarre and beautiful – naturally blue, yet surrounded by volcanic rock. Amazing.
Blue Lagoon, power plant in background, and bad weather.
Volcanic landscape surrounding blue lagoon.
Little Geysir
The last day, off I went on the Golden Circle tour, the most sterile and touristic part of the trip (compared with the glacier walk and dog sledding, for sure). Geysir’s the original geyser, and doesn’t do much these days – however, the other hot springs nearby, particularly Strokkur, put on plenty of little shows.
Strokkur, bubbling, ready to go. I took video to show you the eruption.
Seeing Strokkur makes me really keen to go see Old Faithful at Yellow Stone now.
Geysir, now only erupting once or twice a month.
Hot spring overflow.
Strokkur overflow.
Blue wishing pool of Blessi. The silver specks are coins.
I don’t know the history of Blessi, a beautiful pool hot springs, with a cold side pool that is a deep blue. There were a spattering of coins in the pond.
Blessi.
Under the (very very hot) water of Blessi (camera didn't like it); see the disintegrated coins?
Astro Boy at Strokkur.
Colours in the run off from Strokkur.
Gullfoss.
Next was Gullfoss – it was hard to see, due to the fog, but damn what a big waterfall.
Blue wishing stream at Thingvellir.
Thingvellir was the most interesting of the day, I thought – and it was here that I really wished I could’ve come here on my own – we were given only half an hour (due to the fading light) to explore. In the sunlight, the place would be spectacular. It’s the site of Iceland’s first parliament, so it has great historical value. It also sits along the fault line between the North American plate and the European plate – so technically, as you cross the bridge you are going from Europe to America.
The fracture between Europe (right) and America (left).
Volcanic rock formations.
Look closely - can you see the boardwalk ... that is missing a large chunk of boardwalk?
Oh, there's the rest of the boardwalk - swept down the river.
Apparently the boardwalks at Thingvellir have to be repaired every winter – and that is why. A few days earlier, the river had frozen over – in the thaw, the ice took out the boardwalk. Gotta love Iceland.
Ice chunks lay next to the river.
Coming home
First sunlight for eight days!
Coming home, the sunrise from the airplane was incredible. It was the first time I’d seen sun for eight days – seriously! – and I was delighted. Bizarrely, I left ICEland at 8 degrees, and arrived in Paris at -4 degrees. There was snow everywhere. Can’t win.
Condensation, and yellow engine of the Icelandic Air plane.
Snow! Outside Paris, instead of green fields, as you normally see from a plane, there was SNOW everywhere. I didn't see any snow in Iceland.
And where to now?
Well, now it’s six weeks since I came back from Iceland, and now it’s time for the next round of holidays (that abortive attempt to go to London was miserably insufficient to qualify as a holiday). I’ve been nowhere (except to Caro’s for a birthday party) and done nothing much; now, is the time, for some seriously fantastic things to come.
I’m headed to Venice, Nice and Barcelona over the ‘crocus’ holidays; when I return there’s only 6 weeks of work left before I throw in my Lille accommodation, and begin a pilgrimmage to Gallipoli for Anzac Day. From there, I’ve started booking travels through Syria and Jordan, culminating in Cairo. I really don’t know where I’ll go next from there. The idea is to go to Russia and Eastern Europe, ending up somehow at Heathrow by the end of June to come home (but, then, there’s the running of the bulls in Pamplona which would be wicked to go to … and another festival over there … ooh but there’s not enough money or time!) I will be broke when I return, but hey, the dole and Temporary Relief Teaching are profitable enough to get me back on my feet (I hope). The only major problem is I think I’m going to shrivel to nothing if I don’t get some sun soon!
Bye for two weeks.
Filed under: Travel
Astroboy at Sólheimajökull
Sólheimajökull
… is a small tongue which squeezes its way out of the fourth largest Icelandic glacier, Mýrdalsjökull. Okay, I’ve got to refer to Google Earth to give you an idea of the size of this bloody thing.
Iceland from Google Space - from here, focus in on the Southern coast. The white splotches (mostly) aren't clouds but glaciers.
The biggest white blotch in the centre is Mýrdalsjökull glacier.
Little groovy tonguey sticky out thing is Sólheimajökull. The black-blue colours in the bottom left isn't water but volcanic sand beaches. For real. It's like Mars down there.
I did a couple of tours in this area – dog sledding and glacier walking.
The glacier is one of the most amazing and bizarre things I’ve seen – Australians don’t exactly get to see glaciers all that often. Climbing up on (and around it) was wicked. Mountain Guides.is’s glacier walk tour is by far the best tour I went on – I highly recommend for anyone stuck doing the day-trips-out-of-Reykjavik thing.
Sexy crampons for ice walking.
We got spikes, crampons and groovy boots (well, not terribly groovy, actually, more oh-so-practical). Then we headed across the black volcanic sand and onto the blue glacier. Because of recent rains, the glacier was somewhat transparent – it was bizarre, looking through the ice to see pockets of black sand enclosed in the depths. Also due to the rain, large crevices had opened and mini streams flowed through holes and cracks down to the river on the beach.
It was incredibly beautiful. I can’t describe it. The colours, despite the overcast weather, were incredible – as were the dozens of tiny waterfalls that lined the cliffs to either side of the tongue. Also spectacular were the drifts of black sand, and the contrast with the blue ice.
Leading up to Sólheimajökull.
Crevices.
Crevices.
Across the ice, looking towards the break in the mountains which lead to Mýrdalsjökull.
Volcanic sand 'dunes' (mountains, rather) border the glacier.
Mountains next to the glacier and black sand dunes.
The sun peaks through the clouds at dusk, as we come down off the ice.
This was how beautiful it was on an overcast day – imagine what it is like in Summer? Amazing.
I came back to Sólheimajökull for the dog ’sledding’. Actually, dog carting, as there was no snow to sled on. Unfortunately, the weather was A W F U L. About worst case scenario – rain, rain, rain. We (the tourists) were saturated to the bone, first in our own clothes, then in the borrowed jumpsuits our guide set us up with. But hey, the dogs were cute, and the landscape on Sólheimajökull’s sandy beach utterly surreal.
Meggie and Jaime will remember that bizarre route we took down from Mt Fuji, across sharp brown volcanic sand, surrounded by fog – a seriously scary experience – well, this was similar.
Dogs take a break on the black sand.
The rain made it difficult to take photos – and my hands were far too cold to take steady shots. I did get lots of video of the dogs though (You Tube clip in the making).
Across the black desert appears ... a US Navy airplane wreck? WTF?
A surprise I wasn’t expecting: abandoned on the Sólheimajökull beach is a dismembered US Navy plane – apparently it crashed here in the 70’s and has since been stripped by the locals for building materials. Spooky.
Navy plane. It was raining heavily, so I had difficulty taking a photo.
Waterfall next to Sólheimajökull.
At dusk we’d returned to the glacier, this time walking alongisde it across the rocky dunes to the edge of the ice.
Photo of the underneath of the glacier.
Because of recent rain and warm weather, we could go in underneath the glacier at the edge – in the above pic, the grey above is the ice, and the black below the sand bed.
Near Sólheimajökull is several waterfalls I visited on both trips:
Seljalandsfoss at dusk, with the lights.
Seljalandsfoss is famous mostly because you can walk behind it and also because it’s lit up at night. Rather spectacular.
Seljalandsfoss, the waterfall you can walk behind - from behind it.
Probably the biggest reason as to why us tourists were absolutely saturated (and freezing) during the dog sledding tour was our crazy tour guide’s enthusiasm to take us behind Seljalandsfoss on a four degree day with heavy rain. It was wet. Would rather do it in summer.
Random waterfall, whose name I have forgotten.
The dog sledding tour guide took us to an extremely large waterfall on the way to the glacier – however I’ve totally forgotten the name. Due to the fog, most of the photos didn’t turn out – above you can see one small tributary of it. Apparently it is the waterfall with the highest volume of water.
Chunkabut waterfall, Skogafoss.
Visible from the road, Skogafoss is pretty high. And you can walk right up to it, and hike up to the top (I was way too lazy to run up there.)
Me in my groovy jumpsuit, lent by the dog sledding operators in place of my soggy jeans and snow jacket.
Other bizarrities of the area:
Old school cave huts near Skogafoss.
Apparently early last century Icelanders utilised the rock and cliff face of the region to build houses and huts. Some still remain.
Icelandic horses.
I did also go horseriding – on the grumpiest Icelandic horse in the pack, of course, a bugger who liked kicking the other horses and refused to cross rivers. Bumpy little shit, too. Anyway, on the dog sledding tour I met some much nicer Icelandic horses, who nibbled at my jacket and headbutted me for cuddles. They’re a bizarre breed, very very hairy and stocky. We were pointedly told that despite their small stature they are n o t ponies. Apparently, the breed has a fifth gait others don’t, and they’re also supposed to be very friendly.
Me and the grumpy Laxnes horse.
Laxnes (the horseriding tour operator) horses.
Cemetery decorated for Christmas.
Now this was something bizarre. Given the five hours of sunlight in winter, the Icelanders decorate their cemeteries with Christmas lights. From a distance, it is a really fantastic sight. They lights stay on all day and night – but environmentalists don’t fear, all power generated in Iceland is geo-thermal: dirt cheap and carbon footprint friendly.
Okay, one more Iceland post to go, for New Years and Blue Lagoon, cheers for bearing with me so far.
