Iceland
Friday February 24, 2017
There's something in the ice in Iceland that makes it much more serene than in Canada. Certainly at this time of year, the soft covering of pristine white snow around the city makes it more picturesque, and even more so in the countryside.
Upon arriving in Reykjavik, I had some time to kill before checking in, so I wandered around town for a bit. I'm staying on a hill near a massive church, with a tower that overlooks the whole city. The view from the top is the highest point in Reykjavik and seeing the city come alive as the sun rose was magical. Afterwards, I walked into the CBD and visited a volcano museum, which happened to be staffed by a guy who studied at Victoria University in Wellington, so that was a good yarn indeed. I continued on to various locations around town, stopping for lunch (I got grilled plaice and lobster!) and for shelter during the snow storm. I wanted to go to this highly rated Icelandic restaurant for dinner but they didn't have space available, so I went to a steakhouse and got some steak.
Yesterday I went on a tour around Iceland's southern coast. It was jam packed with sightseeing, we visited Skogafoss Waterfall, which has water from the infamous volcano, Eyjafjallajökull, then the Reynisfjara Black Sand Beach for lunchtime where I got some expensive fish and chips. The tour continued to the Solheimajokull Glacier, where we hiked for a few hours onto the glacier itself, admiring (and avoiding) some large crevasses all over the terrain. There was the opportunity to go down and explore one of them, but unfortunately we didn't have time. There were a lot of groups on the glacier and we opted to hike further up to watch the sunset colours light up the white snow and blue ice.
We stopped by the Seljalandsfoss Waterfall on the way back, which we missed that morning as there were too many people around it. You can walk behind it, but at that time of night it would have been suicidal, so we took a few photos and then I got dropped off for the aurora hunting tour.
Four minibuses scoured the southwestern coast of Iceland for a dark spot with no light pollution and clear skies. We found the Strandarkirkja church and waited for a bit but to no luck. A snowstorm started picking up so we bundled back onto the buses. Unexpectedly, about an hour later on the way back to Reykjavik, we found a large campfire by the side of the road and all four buses pulled over - "we have lights!!" came the excited call over the intercom. We all rushed out to gawk at the night sky and sure enough, overhead, visible but faint, were these curtains and pillars of green light, moving slowly and fading in and out of view.
The shots you see on Google image search are all taken with long exposures on fancy cameras so completely not representative of what you see in real life. What the cameras don't capture is the movement, the ghostly shimmering of the aurora borealis as it dances across the sky. It was a very memorable experience for me, it's definitely one that I can check off on the bucket list. Of course I'd like to take every opportunity to see more aurora, especially in different colours.
I was back at the hostel close to 2am and today it's completely whited out with snow. They cancelled the whale watching trip I was supposed to go on and it does look quite miserable outside, so it might just be a quiet rest day today.
Posted by Jeremy at 1:01pm on Friday February 24, 2017 :: 0 comments :: 