Iceland (and more particularly Reykjavik) has been, since I was about 8 years old, one of the places I have always wanted to go. It was exactly on the opposite end of the world from New Zealand and I used to sit and look at this little (pink-coloured) island on my globe in my room thinking how exotic it would be to go there. So, I was super excited to be getting on the plane to Iceland. Iceland did not let me down!!
In Reykjavik for our first couple of days we were hoping to meet some of the late season puffins - so first morning bright and early we jumped on a boat and headed off to track some down. There were only a few stragglers left - but we found this guy below who was happy to pose for some photos.
Little did we know that extreme food adventurer Shaun would soon have one of them on his plate - amongst other extreme food - although there was one that got away (the sheep's head diner in Reykjavik - Shaun meant to go but somehow I forgot to drive us back that way).
One thing I WAS pretty excited by was the prospect of Reykjavik's "geothermal beach". Yee-haa. I was dreaming of waves of hot steamy water crashing onto the sand... however we soon discovered that the geothermal effect was to raise the water temperature on that beach from 4C to 14C. The helpful local girl at the changing sheds told us "the first minute in the water is hell, but then every part of your body freezes and you don't notice the cold anymore". She was right. Afterwards, feeling like uber-hardcore tourists, we posed like hardmen for the camera (just beginning to thaw out).
To ease the thawing out we had been helped by some Icelandic hotdogs and a warm hot pool on the shoreline.
Seemingly not content with having frozen all our bodily organs one day, the next day we had another go - this time, snorkelling over a fault line in the (inland) historic Thingvellir National Park - the meeting point of the European and American tectonic plates. The water here was a genuine 4C - but, helped by layers of drysuit + superthick wetsuit, we had a fun half an hour or so snorkelling over the cavernous depths below.
Busy doing justice to the other Reykjavik area sights, we visited the famous Golden Circle (Geysir/Gulfoss (waterfall) combo) before heading out onto the Ring Road with our tent ...
...when it felt like the real Icelandic holiday started. Outside Reykjavik, the Ring Road (and certain detours off it) brings miles and miles of open space, big sky, quirky little towns, vast stretches of moss-covered lava fields and every now and again, incredible waterfalls, both large and small. To me the land also felt undeniably old, this place where Vikings lived over a millenium ago still has a real sense of their occupation - an unusual feeling in a country where there are still only just over 300,000 inhabitants.
In the north and east we spent some time winding our way around little fjords and some almost unpronounceable small towns - like Siglufjordur, former 'herring capital of the world' - where I tried to recreate being a herring-salting woman working on the pier ..
and Husavik, where apart from going whale-watching in creaking old wooden fishing boats, you can visit the world's only Phallological (Penis) Museum - with actual preserved examples from every mammal on earth. I guess the winters can be slow months in Iceland without a hobby ... (that's me posing next to the tasteful statue outside).
Iceland has some (other) really interesting museums. One of these is the Turf Museum at Glambauer, which has a number of preserved 19th century turf houses (think rectangular hobbit houses with mud floors) which illustrated pretty starkly what life must have been like during the cold Icelandic winters.
And then, just when it was all getting a bit atmospheric and cultural, we decided to tear it up for a morning on a very touristy but squealing-with-fun snowmobile trip across Vatnajokull, Europe's biggest glacier (which takes up about 20% of Iceland's inland landmass). It was super fun - even more so when I got to drive...
Driving further south the massive glacier sticks various tongues out all along the coast - including at Jokulsarlon, where it discharges floating ice into a large bay. As luck would have it, the afternoon we were there the sun was shining as never before (apparently) and seals were out to play in the lagoon. It was completely stunning (and even more unbelievable as this photo - below - is essentially taken straight from the carpark). I wasn't the only one who liked it though, this lagoon has featured in at least 2 Bond films so far (including being completely frozen over for a car chase scene in Die Another Day).
Making our way back towards Reykjavik for our flight home, we stopped off at the most famous of the hot pools Iceland is famous for (and we did sample a lot of these) - the Blue Lagoon. Super expensive but it would be wrong not to really ...
M
