Iceland has become
a bit ‘flavour of the month’ for travellers and we were keen to find out why.
There was a particular reason, besides the spectacular scenery, that we decided
to travel there, but more about that later.
Ian and I had 24 hours in Reykjavik before Adelaide arrived and we had a lovely day exploring the city. We walked along the waterside from our hostel to the Sun Voyager sculpture which is often misinterpreted as a Viking ship. It is in fact an ode to the sun and symbolises light and hope.
Hallgrimskirkja dominates the city and can be seen from nearly everywhere. We paid our 900ISK and took the lift to the viewing platform for amazing views over the city and surrounds. Under the shadow of the church, we stumbled upon a beautiful sculpture park. We took in a lovely concert at the Harpa Concert Hall and admired its award-winning architectural design. We perused craft shops, hugged a troll or two, drank coffee and later, local beer.
After we picked up
our car we headed for a nature reserve near the capital called Úlfarsfell. As
we approached the walking track a lady who looked to be in her late 60s smiled
at us and asked if we were going to do the walk. ‘It is lovely’ she informed us
and to be fair it was when we finally reached the summit and I had called her
every name under the sun for the hoax she had perpetrated, that this was some
kind of stroll in the park fit even for the elderly! The track was steep and
rocky but the city and district views were extensive, 360 degrees and awesome.
The final straw came when a fellow passed us on…A BICYCLE! (I need to work on
my fitness. Ian of course was fine.) The hills were covered in wildflowers to
enhance the experience and it was a perfect, if a fairly strenuous, way to end
our day.
*Fun Fact: The equivalent of the convenience store 7-11 is 10-11. Doesn’t have the same ring to it but they obviously like a late start.
Adelaide initially selected our latest holiday destination as she was heading to our hemisphere and wanted to make the most of her long haul flight. And what a long haul it turned out to be! While Ian and I skipped over the Atlantic in a three hour jaunt, Adelaide was slugging her way through multiple stopovers to reach Reykjavik after a journey of about 32 hours.
She made it though, around 2am and our first stop after a refreshing five hour nap was Blue Lagoon. Just 40 minutes south of the capital, it is quite the experience. Basically a 38 degree silica soup set in dramatic jagged lava flows. We bobbed and floated and eased away any tension. Our silica facial masks were supposed to wreak miracles, maybe they did. It’s not for me to judge. One thing to keep in mind however is that silica is essentially sand. This is not a pool for swimming in. You are best advised to keep your face out of the water lest you get eyes full of minute grit. Our algae masks finished off our beauty therapy and we were ready to show our faces in public once more. There is a swim-up bar for smoothies, beer, juice or my preferred wallowing tipple, prosecco. Bláa Ionið is busy but very well laid out to handle the visitors and certainly large enough that you will not feel crowded. We found parts of the pool practically uninhabited.
*Fun Fact: Thermal pools are called hotpots and you must strip completely and wash thoroughly before you enter one.
Adelaide had studied hard to fashion a workable itinerary in the weeks preceding our adventure with the aid of a huge road map of the island blu-tacked on her living room wall, a trusty Lonely Planet which she devoured cover to cover and a good stock of sticky notes. She rose to the daunting task in stellar fashion and with a rough route in mind and our overnight accommodation along the way pre-booked, we set off, newly invigorated and de-stressed ready to circumnavigate the country with a station wagon full of travel snacks, two potential car-sickness patients and a very accomplished driver at the wheel (He only turned on the wrong side of the road twice in eight days, honest!). We headed anti-clockwise, unconventional apparently but then that’s how we roll. What we experienced over the next nine days never ceased to amaze, dazzle and delight us.
It is written everywhere and may sound cliché, but Iceland truly is a land of fire and ice. Its geographical and topological features are awe inspiring and grand in every aspect and they are all wrought from the island’s geological history of volcanic activity and the action of ice grinding across the landscape. Some of that history is recent, who can forget the travel chaos inflicted by Eyjafjallajökull’s eruption in 2010, and some of it is ancient, created millennia ago but you cannot but be constantly made aware of how the landscape has been formed and transformed. Vast U-shaped valleys gouged by glaciers, volcanic peaks and craters, lava flows as far as the eye can see, fjords plunging to the sea, igneous rubble spewed from volcanoes and milled or fractured by ice.
There are areas
that look like moonscapes with grey/brown gravel and dust extending for
kilometres, flat and desolate. There are steep grass covered hills rising
abruptly on one side of the road and a steep slope to the sea on the other.
Basalt columns in huge formations like church organs wrought in stone. Everywhere
new and stunning vistas arise. Snow covered volcanic craters were among some of
the more extraordinary sights for a bunch of Australians whose country is
notably devoid of evidence of such an explosive creation.
Reading signs and placenames is tricky to say the least. I overheard one fellow early in our trip telling his friend, “Just go with the first five letter and the last three”. Not bad advice as many signs carry around 18 to 25 characters making me feel like a kid had run rampant with a bag of Scrabble tiles, pulling them out by the handful and arranging them randomly.
The country is very sparsely populated, only 335,000ish people inhabit the 103,000 square kilometres. This is actually roughly the same population density as Australia but once you take out the 200,000 who live in the Capital region of Reykjavik that leaves about the capacity of the MCG spread across the rest of the country. This means there are many tiny communities dotted all over the island. Ásgeir, the popular Icelandic indie artist, comes from a home ‘town’ with a population of 40. We passed many isolated locations with a single farmstead and a couple of out buildings nestled at the foot of a towering knoll or set on bare rolling hills, dwarfed by the enormous landscape. Every community has at least one church but not every church has a community. We passed some churches that sat alone in remote, picturesque settings. About 75% of Iceland’s population are members of the Evangelical Lutheran Church and about another 15% belong to other churches.
*Fun Fact: There are no mountains in Iceland, just valleys.
There are stranger things nestling in that landscape too. Those quirky Icelanders! We stopped at a solar powered vending machine on an isolated stretch of road. Complete with a picnic bench to enjoy your spoils and a rubbish bin to dispose of your detritus, it looked totally incongruous, literally miles and miles from any notion of civilization. It worked well though and I came away with my vending machine spoils of chocolate covered caramel balls! We also stopped to investigate an orange chair atop a rocky outcrop in the middle of nowhere. Set into the rock it is a permanent fixture and a malapropos seating arrangement that bemused and confused us. The outer areas of the island that we drove are largely treeless. Trees when they do appear are generally small birches in sparse stands. There was however a profusion of wildflowers wherever there was sufficient soil to support them and large tracts of succulents, mosses, lichens and other pretty, low growing groundcovers over the rockier areas. These plants are delicate and easily damaged and as tourist numbers grow I think the Icelanders may have to start cordoning off areas from the heavy-footed masses.
The Icelandic people make up 89% of the population and they are, on the whole lovely. Friendly and helpful and with an excellent command of English. They have my new favourite accent which is a delight to listen too. (Just think Bjork) From those we met they seem a very chilled bunch.
*Fun Fact: Most Icelanders don’t have surnames. They take their father’s name followed by son or daughter (dóttir) as their last name. The Icelandic phone book is listed by first names.
We did the Golden Circle, which is an area of outstanding natural beauty (tell me what part of Iceland is not an area of outstanding natural beauty. We didn’t see one!), where the major attractions are quite close to the road and easily done in a half day. There is Pingvellir National Park where the Vikings established the world’s first democratic parliament in AD930. The area is set on the fissure between the separating North American and Eurasian tectonic plates that are slowly moving away from each other at a rate of between 1mm and 18mm per year. Here we witnessed the first of so many waterfalls.
Further on we went to the mother of Icelandic waterfalls, Gullfoss renowned for its spectacular two stage drop at near right angles to each other, it plunges 32 metres into a steep narrow gully. Breathtaking! Just a couple of days after our visit a young man fell to his death in this very waterfall, a reminder of the danger of getting too close to such a powerful manifestation of nature. Most of the places we visited relied upon you to make sensible and safe choices. Guard rails were few and far between so you could see how accidents happen.
Then to Geysir to see this relatively rare geological feature from which all other geysers in the world get their name. Oh except for this one, the original. Iceland, the land that gave us the word geyser is the only place in the world where it is not called a geyser but is a ‘hver’. Confused? Me too. Never mind. The ‘hver’ (geyser to you and me) at Geysir erupts sporadically and spectacularly every 8-10ish minutes. The Icelandic concession to Health and Safety is a dodgey rope cordon and a sign telling you not to test the warmth of the water with any body parts as it is about 98 degrees (and up to 240 degrees below the surface!) and the nearest hospital is 62 kilometres away. Fair enough, I say. Then on to the black sand beach where the ferries leave to go to the Vestmannaeyjar. We stopped to look at the islands from the coast but we didn’t have time to visit, (maybe next time?)
So, this was just our first day! The next day we had three very special experiences. At the lovely Seljalandsfoss a track guides the visitor behind the waterfall. You can stand and watch the water plunge over the cliff above you and thunder onto the rocks below showering you with its spray and engulfing you in the roar of the water. It was an exhilarating experience even if we did emerge a little damp on the other side. Nothing an Icelandic hotdog and hot chocolate and a change into dry pants in the carpark couldn’t fix.
*Fun Fact: Parents must choose from an authorised list of first names for their child. If you want to deviate from the list you must apply and receive special permission within strict guidelines.
Next we visited Solheimmajokull, a glacier that you can walk right up to and, with the right equipment clamber over in crampon style. We chose to venture onto the areas nearest the walking track, just beyond the sign that says you must not pass without climbing equipment and a guide. Oops. It was spectacular standing on a glacier! Many areas are covered in ash from volcano activity and other areas are white or clear or aqua blue. Our final experience for the day was the Glacial Lagoon and Diamond Beach of Jökulsárlón. We took an amphibian trip out onto the lagoon which is littered with icebergs from the surrounding Breiðamerkurjökull. The glacier has receded eight kilometres in the past 80 years which is alarming. One of the icebergs had flipped an hour before our visit and was a deep bright blue. Depending on the amount of sunlight it encounters it will fade to white in a matter of hours to a day or so. It was incredibly beautiful. The lagoon is 300 metres deep but at the lagoon mouth that reduces to just 30 metres so the icebergs get stuck at the opening. They slowly melt until they are small enough to pass through where they are washed out to sea and then washed up onto the surrounding beaches as bright clear or white chunks of ice that glitter like glass on the black sand. Hence the name Diamond Beach. More surprising spectacular-ness!
Later in the trip
we visited Husavik on the north-west coast and were taken out onto the bay in a
zippy Zodiac and came up close and personal with 40,000 nesting puffins, a
dolphin and several humpback whales. My only previous encounter with a whale was
a dark shape glimpsed from the Manly ferry near the Sydney Harbour Bridge years
ago so to get so close to these magnificent creatures was wonderful. We had the
pleasure of their company for a couple of hours. They require tonnes of food
each day so it is rare to see two feeding alongside each other. We also saw
some lone individuals. To hear and see their steamy, misty blow as they
surfaced was wonderful. Zooming back to the harbour our skipper put the craft
into some gnarly twists and turns to a booming soundtrack of ACDC.
(Thunderstruck!) We held on tight and enjoyed the exhilaration.
During our Iceland trip we visited pretty villages huddled beside fjords under steep hillsides cut through with waterfalls and topped with rugged peaks. We saw other amazing waterfalls, including the huge horse-shoe shaped Goðafoss. We felt their spray and listened to their tumultuous crash. We hiked across sulphurous ground to bubbling mud and boiling pools through landscapes that looked other-worldly. We walked up the side of a volcano that last erupted between 3-4,000 years ago to peer into the rocky crater. We bathed in a thermal pool high on the side of a fjord with a practically wet edge vista out to the valley. We tasted 1000 year old glacial ice and prosciutto wrapped, deep-fried hotdogs and some excellent craft beer. We availed ourselves of some great little bars and stayed in excellent budget accommodation.
*Fun Fact: Many of the Game of Thrones ‘Beyond the wall’ scenes are shot in Iceland in the winter. (We visited Jon Snow’s sex cave).
The most brilliant place we stayed was what we are calling our Secret Valley. In truth it was a secluded fjord accessed by a steep, twisting, narrow dirt road that wound its way through a giant landscape of cascading steps on a scale I have never encountered. To say it was breathtaking doesn’t do it justice. I actually sobbed a little bit because I felt overwhelmed and it seemed a fair enough reaction at the time even if it took me by surprise. The photos we took on our way in don’t capture it at all. I should have made Adelaide run out into the wilderness to give the thing some scale and perspective! On a little grassy hill just above the fjord we had a gorgeous wooden hut complete with a Heidi loft for my Heidi and views over the fjord and surrounding hill-sides rising steeply out of the water. We didn’t want to leave. If you are planning a visit to Iceland and you want to know its location, a sizable donation to the wilderness preservation society of your choice and I may be willing to pass on the details J The Taj Mahal glowing in full moon light and the overwhelming vastness of the Grand Canyon are the only other two sights that have brought me to tears like that. I will remember it for the rest of my days.
We stayed on the lovely Snæfellsnes Peninsula on our last night on the road. Unfortunately we were not able to enjoy the remarkable views in all their glory as the clouds hung low over the reportedly spectacular 1446 metre ice-capped Snæfell volcano made famous as the start of the Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne. It was still an amazing place to visit (if you discount my encounter with several very cranky dive-bombing plovers who were convinced I was going to do away with their ground bound chick).
*Fun Fact: There are no McDonalds in Iceland
So why did we choose Iceland? Well, because Puffins!
Adelaide’s research really payed off when she found a place that offered close
up views of a colony of these charming creatures. They are remarkable birds
whose flying wings work equally well in water as flippers. They are excellent
swimmers but fly like miniature washing machines. They must flap at up to 400
beats per minute and have no capacity to glide. ‘If they stop they will plummet
like a stone’ in the words of our whale watching guide. The colony we observed
was also home to a colony of Icelandic gulls who terrorised the poor puffins. As
the puffins arrived back at their nesting holes with a beak full of fish the
gulls swooped and stole the food. The puffins were pretty good at diving
straight into their little burrows as soon as they landed but still they lost
some catches as we watched. Bloody seagulls, stealing chips and herrings all
across the world! Puffins mate at about 4-5 years of age and have the same
partner for the rest of their life which is typically about another 20 years.
The couple build the nesting 
burrow together but
each year the male returns early from their winter at sea to do a spring clean
before the female arrives to lay her single egg. They seemed fairly accepting
of our presence and watched us about as intently as we watched them. They are
adorable to look at. That large reddish beak is just for show and they shed it
after the breeding season. We were very lucky to get so close and observe so
many of these gorgeous creatures. And, no
we didn’t eat any even though we saw them on several menus. (We didn’t eat
whale either, just for the record #mayhaveinthepastbutthatwasalongtimeagoahem)
*Fun Fact: Iceland gets 81% of its primary energy requirements from renewable sources. 100% of the country’s electricity is generated from hydro (75%) and geothermal (25%) J. However, a lot of this energy is consumed smelting other countries’ aluminium L
Iceland, (or Ísland in Icelandic, pronounced istlant) is an outstanding holiday destination. Since the GFC and Iceland’s economic crash, it is an expensive place to visit. Despite that, tourism is definitely on the rise. The Icelandic approach of gentle, polite respect means that tourists tend to roam how and where they please. This could well lead to despoiling some places of great natural beauty unless there are sensible restraints put on the visitors. You’re asked to refrain from building cairns, pooping or leaving paper in nature, and to stick to trails when hiking. We saw almost no litter, so that was reassuring. There are new (and expensive) attractions opening up to take advantage of the influx of the tourist Krona. You can hike on or into a glacier, descend into a volcano or a lava tunnel, watch whales from a boat or icebergs from an amphibian. But there is plenty to see that is free and just as amazing. I would definitely recommend fly/drive to take in the many and varied attractions. The roads are pretty good, even the many unsealed B roads are well maintained. (We wait with bated breath to find out how strictly the authorities enforce speeding penalties.) I would definitely not recommend touring by bicycle as the roads have no hard shoulders. The summer days are long and it doesn’t actually get dark, just a few hours of twilight so it’s easy to forget that you should go to bed at some stage!
We didn’t get to everything we wanted to see but we saw more than we had planned for. We drove nearly 2800 kilometres and took countless photos. We loved every moment and would happily return if the opportunity arose.
If you get the chance, Go see Iceland.
Because…PUFFINS
(Iceland, as you have probably gathered, has some splendid sights to see. If you would like to see some more of our photos just click here to be taken to a Gallery of Highlights)
(Matching puffin beanies! Why not?)