Glaciers, Geysers and Falls Oh My

Hugi likes to sing karaoke. There are two bars offering karaoke in Reykjavik, both apparently woefully neglected when it comes to the quality of equipment, or so our guide now troubadour told us. So yes, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

We went. We sang.

Back to the sublime.

Friday promised to be a long day, Hugi having been up till then telling us that it normally went 12-14 hours. He wasn't lying. So a fairly early start of out the door by 8am was agreed to. We did well for ourselves and were already to go by about then, and Hugi did well for himself and had already been out and picked up two new folk, Tom and Marcy, who I have already introduced you to.

A caveat. The order of this might be a touch off, and as the boys are still asleep and we are now in London, I don't have anyone to verify my shoddy memory. Sure, you may not notice, but maybe you've done a similar tour and are wondering about why all the backtracking. If you are such a person, then a) comment, as I'd like to know, and b) my sincere apologies for inadvertently altering the space-time continuum.

First was a trip to Fingvellir National Park. I don't know if the Vikings who held their first parliament here in 930 AD knew it or not, but they set up shop overlooking the drift between the North American and Eurasian plates. And no, they likely didn't. Yep, what you're looking at is, in some odd little way I guess, not part of either continent. A neutral zone if you will, devoid of William Shatner and his shennanigans.

It made for a nice first walk for the day, though this lovely ramp down had me in a limp by the bottom. Gonna be a long one.

From Fingvellir we went on to Geysir park, where there are, as you might expect by the name, geysers. Before getting there though a quick note on my use of the letter "f" in Fingvellir. The actual letter that belongs there is called "thorn", one of those fun, older letters that you find in Icelandic, earlier forms of English, Gaelic I think, and lord knows where else, and when properly rendered looks like a capital "P" flying at half mast. It is transliterated as "th". So why have I been writing it as "F"? Because I am a tool.

Geysir park, as I am now about to unnecessarily explain for the second time, is a park full of geysers. There are several there, but currently only one is going off. Conveniently it erupts on a fairly decent schedule of every 5-6 minutes or so, so we stuck around and watched a few times. I, sadly, did not get a picture of an eruption, though I believe Jake did, so go bug him for it.

They're all steaming though, as they are very hot. Go figure. Water exploding out of the ground up to 70 metres high. Yes, it's going to be hot. They figure it's been active for at about 10,000 years, with the first recording of it (I assume not on a GoPro) in the 13th century.

The geysers are quite influenced by earthquake activity in the area, hence why only one is popping these days. The others have been blocked up somewhere beneath. One good rattle though and who knows, we may get the whole field spewing forth. I doubt the little ropes that keep you from getting to close will be of much use if that were to happen.

Next was on to Gullfoss, or Golden Waterfall. This waterfall comes in two drops, one of about 11 metres, followed by another of 21 metres, and flows into the river Hvita.

Did I mention the rain? Sorry about that.

Conveniently, you're able to get quite close near the top of these falls, at which point a few water droplets on the camera lense don't matter as much. Somehow though that didn't happen on this one, though you may see bits of my thumb print from having "dried" the lense.

Spending time close to these falls I found myself asking whether Niagara Falls would be more majestic if there wasn't so much human stuff built up all around it? Being from Toronto I've been to Niagara Falls many a time to show it off to visiting friends or family, or of course, to show the boys when they were young. So maybe they've lost their luster for me, or have become common, taken for granted. Certainly a horrible thing to say about one of the seven natural wonders of the world - depending of course which list you look at. Anyway, that's the question I am left pondering because these falls, and many of the ones we saw in Iceland, well, while some are taller, none are anywhere near as wide, but they pack a huge wallop when spending time with them, one much greater in my opinion than Niagara, and I think that has to do with the area around the falls remaining relatively untouched. At least, untouched when compared to Niagara.

With the visit to Gullfoss done we had now seen the "big three" that make up what, in the Icelandic tourism trade is called, The Golden Circle.

But wait, there was more!

There was Skogafoss, another gorgeous waterfall we got to visit.

There is a stairwell up the right side of Skogafoss that leads to an excellent lookout area. I actually skipped the up part as I knew the down was going to suck on my knee. This turned out for the best, for, as it so happens, the top of Skogafoss is the gateway to about 25km worth of hiking trails that lead you past many a more waterfall. I would likely still be there.

The next stop was, surprisingly enough, another waterfall. See, I told you there were alot.

Seljalandsfoss has the notoriety of being the one where Jake was heard utter "I want to touch a waterfall". Well, see the smaller fall on the left side of the below photo, that's where Jake touched it. Or rather, that is where it touched him.

How did he get there you may ask? Well, conveniently, you can walk behind these falls.

Okay, I am now really disappointed. I was about to start writing about a local legend about how a treasure chest of gold was hid behind these falls, and that it was once found, but when they tried to pull it out the ring broke off, so it's still there. I was pretty sure it was Seljalandsfoss and not Skogafoss (they are pretty close together) because you can walk behind Seljalandsfoss, so it just naturally follows.  So why am I disappointed? I'm disappointed because I went to look it up so I could keep my legend facts straight for everyone, and, reading through a few blogs I discovered plagarism. Yes, word for word descriptions of this chest of gold legend (attributed to Skogafoss by the way). Plagarism. On blogs. Seriously people, if you're writing a blog or travel site or anything really, don't you think your own words might be worth it? Or at least cite it properly. And there is this crazy new thing I hear you can do. You can make a LINK to other information on the internet. How is plagarism the right choice here?

Sorry. Pisses me off.

This is getting behind Seljalandsfoss. I've been constantly amazed by how green Iceland can be; how life clings and abounds on this rocky terrain. No exception here. And an excellent reminder of how important water is to life, no matter what Nestles may tell you.

Alrighty. Here's a good view of what Jake got himself into. It's the one on the right. He just walked out onto that bit of rock there and "touched" the waterfall. Thank you MEC for quick drying clothes.

All I can say is that I am very, very proud.

Next we went to the moon. I now take back everything I said earlier. Okay, maybe "take back" is the wrong term. I would just now like to say that yes, Iceland seems like a good place to practice for a moon walk.

An it just goes on, and on.

These are actually some of the many blacksand beaches along Icelands coast. Simon told me last night that the Canary Islands also have blacksand beaches and that that is where they tested the moon vehicles. Glad to see they spread it around.

Oh, and apparently the US crashlanded a plane on the moon.

 And if walking on the moon wasn't enough it was then time to go walk on a glacier. This shot is taken from the parking area. You can see the glacier off in the distance and some of us part way there. So no, not super far to walk. That said, fifteen years ago I would have been standing on the glacier from where I took this photo.

Global warming kinda sucks.

We did however manage to walk out a bit. While there were some slippery points much of where we were walking had enough dirt on it to provider purchase for our hiking shoes. Any further though and crampons would have been required.

The below is a fine example of the types of cracks in the glacier we were stepping over. They're nice as you can see hints of the blue ice that comes about from the extreme pressure this much weight creates. All in all, dirty things glaciers. But really awesome.

Looking at the map again I think this glacier is Myrdalsjokull, but unfortunately I cannot say for sure. Given its in the south, and we were in the south, it seems a reasonable guess on my part.

And yes, that's Noah and Jake walking along a ridge by the glacier. Not quite as nimble footed as Icelandic sheep, or ninja's for that matter, but they do a pretty good job of it.

Next was a set of cliffs and cave in and around Reynisdrangar. They have the notoriety of being where the recent film Noah starring Russell Crowe was filmed, but we won't hold that against them. Not that I've seen the film. I've just got this thing about Russell Crowe, and it ticks me off that someone so talented can be such a jerk, or so the media has lead me to believe, so I take it out in odd little ways. Why can't everyone be Neil Patrick Harris?

Anyway, as you can see it's a pretty good place to go for a lie down once you've drunk too much wine and want to get naked.

And it provides excellent shelter.

At least of course until the tides come in.

Now, I'm going to do something I didn't think I would do. I'm going to repost a picture, just so that it makes the following comparison nice and easy for all you viewers out there.

The first shot is of the Lutheran church Hallgrimskirkja in Reykjavik which I mentioned earlier. Notice the sides.

Now, these are the cliff walls.

Neat eh?

Our last stop was to try and see puffins. The boys and I did not see puffins, though others did when they wandered down to the beach.

We did however see this.

Now, this is not one of the trolls rocks that you may have heard about. We were in that area but, due to the all day rain fest, the visibility was about zero, so we didn't stop to just get wetter than we already were. That said, still gorgeous.

From there our merry band of eight headed back to Reykjavik.

The next day we got up and Hugi took us to the bus station where we dropped off our bags and then wandered around the city for a couple of hours. In the rain. I would not say that the boys and I were feeling overly inspired, hence the lack of photos and our arrival back at the bus station a very safe hour or so before the bus departed. We did however have a chance to walk along the docks, and chat with a fellow on a coast guard ship heading out the next day to patrol Greenland. Unfortunately they did not require any additional hands. Seriously. I asked. Just ask the guys.

Then it was off to the airport, and on to Tanya and Simon's in London, where I now sit, nice and refreshed, on Sunday morning in their lovely kitchen.

A couple of things to close off our trip to Iceland.

The first is a theme I've been going on about: being happy with the experiences had rather than being upset by those that don't. One of the things I had really been looking forward to doing was going to elf-spotting school. I think I wrote about this already. Anyway, it did not happen. The boys and I have no idea how to spot the places where the hidden folk continue to live. Being able to post a photo of my certificate proclaiming me a qualified elf spotter. Adding this to my CV. These are two things that I wish I could be doing right now that I can't as the schedule just did not allow for it. That said, amazing things were seen, and as the headmaster of the school emailed me last night about other options, I guess I'll just have to keep in touch and meet with him next time. Yes, there will be a next time.

The second is on couchsurfing. As this was our first experience with it I didn't know what to expect. I also want to be respectful to everyone I was with, so I will say the following. For the most part I very much enjoyed the experience, and enjoyed the people that I got to stay and travel with. I think as a bunch of strangers tossed together for a few days non-stop we did a good job of it. That said, when I was in university and moving out of residence I chose to live with one other person, and only one. Why? Because when it comes to relationships, where I am A,  I'm good with the A-B relationship, I'm good with the A-C relationship, but I struggle when there are issues with the B-C relationship.

That sort of thing did happen along the way. Noah and Jake were awesome about it. It didn't phase them and they hardly noticed it. Me on the other hand, less so. It was very difficult to keep myself out of it, and that, I think, is what I need to be doing. The core thing I do at work is facilitate, I'm not a fan of conflict, and I really like it when everyone is comfortable and getting their needs met. Not walking into the middle of a situation where that is not the case and trying to help sort it out is a hard thing for me to do, but likely the right choice to make given the year we have ahead. I guess we will see. And honestly, I'm not sure. What matters most I think is that the three of us feel safe and comfortable wherever we are, so I guess whatever I need to make that happen is the right thing for me to be doing. So maybe there isn't a "rule" to this one. Maybe it's taking each situation one at a time.

I have hopes for couchsurfing while in the UK, and have already received an invitation to go to the zoo from someone on the network. Another friend we just haven't met yet.

Simon is cracking eggs. Time for breakfast with the friends we've got.