Iceland

This destination came to me as I was looking at flights back to Canada for summer vacation. I thought to myself why not stop somewhere interesting for a week and relax. Iceland was this small dot all alone on the map. I had been hearing interesting things politically about Iceland and thought why not do a bit of research.

Research turned up lots of interesting things in the way of natural hot springs and the midnight sun phenomenon. So I phoned home and said I’d be back a little later than expected I was going to stop in Iceland.

I was looking up car rentals and travel buddies using the website www.travbuddy.com when I got a message from mom. Who was I travelling with? What was I going to do? Would I mind some company. Mom had been doing research of her own and thought Iceland would be a neat place to travel.

Some to share expenses with, someone easy to travel with. So mom and dad decided to meet me in Iceland and somewhere (Facebook) along the way another friend heard about the adventure and joined. So we had on 8 day adventure travelling around Iceland.

In our 8 days we really saw a lot. We did as much of the Iceland circle as we could and stayed in some really nice and not so nice places.

We arrived in Reykjavik at different times. The others arrived at 6am and set off for the Blue Lagoon, where they had their own adventure, before returning to the airport to pick me up.

Their adventure consisted of picking up the rental car and then driving to the Blue Lagoon. At the Blue Lagoon they were completely unable to lock the car or no known reason. The car having all of their luggage in it could not be left unlocked. So they drove back to the rental place and told the guy the problem. He had no idea but couldn’t figure out how to lock the car either. Luckily one of the other workers came by and said the newer model cars locked automatically when the fob on the key was far enough 50m-100m away. They walked the key away from the car and it locked. Problem Solved.

They drove back to the Blue Lagoon and went to go get tickets. They had not pre purchased tickets so they would have to wait for a space to be open, that could take over an hour. So they want back to the locked car and decided to drive some where and find breakfast to eat. The problem was it was barely 10am and there was not a lot in the area. They finally found a little mom and pop place and had a hamburger (the first of many). Then it was back to the airport where they napped in the car until it was time to meet me at arrivals.

We then drove into Reykjavik for our hotel and dinner with our first surprise. It was 22$ for a mixed drink, 30$ or more for a basic burger. We were in the land of expensive. We quickly found a grocery store and got sandwich necessities and snacks to cover some of our meals while we were travelling.

We spent the evening catching up and watching the sun as it never set. Then we crashed early because of the time change. But in return were up at 4am. It was still full daylight so we were able to make breakfast and get a very early start to our day.

The Golden Circle

The Golden Circle is a single day driving trip from Reykjavik. Along the golden circle you see Thingvellir National Park. This is the places where people once met to learn/hear/change the law of the land and to have other meetings of importance. This places is also full of beautiful landscapes to go with it’s amazing history.

Gullfoss Waterfall and the Geyser are also along the Golden Circle Drive. These are amazing sights that show the beauty of Iceland.

We continued on to see Seljalandfoss and Skogarfoss. I think Foss means waterfall in Iceland. It is at the end of the name of all the water falls so I think it’s a safe assumption. That night we stayed in a log cabin and had hamburgers and carrot cake to celebrate dad’s birthday.

Continuing to Drive

The next day we woke up and had breakfast at the hotel. Then it was off to try and find the haunted tomb. And I do mean try and find. We found the parking area and we found the path that seemed to go almost strait up a cliff and decided to see if there was a different parking area with less of a wall climb. We never did find one. We did however, find this nice black sand.

Then it was off to the glacial lake Jokulsarlon. On the way we crossed many large and small rivers full of glacial melt water. We also passed some huge twisted pieces of metal from where a flood had taken out a bridge. When we arrived at Jokulsarlon we took an amphibian (boat/truck) out onto the lake to get closer to the edge of the Jokulsarlon Glacier. The boat guide fished a piece of ice from the lake and said that it was good luck if you could hold it in your bare hands for some ridiculously small amount of time (like 30 seconds). Leave it to the Canadians to hold on to it for more than 5 minutes when no one else wanted to try.

We soon learned that this was to be the hamburger waterfall tour of Iceland. My picky parents has hamburgers for dinner almost every night and everyday we saw one or more new waterfalls. One of the highlights of the trip for me was getting to go to a Puffin nesting ground and see this unique bird.

The other big highlight was that the entire 8 days we were in Iceland the sun never set. We had 24 hours of daylight the whole trip. We also had, by necessity, very good blackout curtains the entire trip. The picture below was taken at Lake Mytvan at about 12:30am on June 24th.

I would recommend Iceland travel to anyone and everyone, but I would caution that this island is both remote and expensive. One way to save a bit of money while travelling around Iceland is to get a van with a bed in the back and sleep in the car. There are special rental cars just for this, we saw them in many places. The other popular way to travel around Iceland is by bike with a tent. Many parks had places for tents but this can only be done in the summer months and even then it can be cold.

Below are some of the thousands of pictures I took while in Iceland.