In 1967 Neil Armstrong and other astronauts came to Iceland to train for their moon landing. Having not been to the moon before I'll have to defer to the folk who made that decision on its appropriateness, but I will say, I am a bit curious if, after stepping out onto the surface, Mr. Armstrong went "Oh ya, I can see it."
If yesterday, our first day in Iceland, was to be considered Noah, Jake and my training for our first steps onto the moon, then the moon better be where Barbarella went and opened a spa after having saved the universe from Durand Durand (though, given the 80's - did she?, I ask you), else we will find it lacking, to the extreme.
Okay, I lie. It's the moon. Saying we would find it lacking is an amazingly dumbass thing to say. I say dumbass things. Many people will attest to that.
The word I uttered most yesterday was "wild". I haven't come up with a better word yet. Hopefully the people I'm with won't mind. Right, the people. We're with people.
We're couchsurfing in Reykjavik. I know I've mentioned this group before, so go look it up if you don't know who I'm talking about. We're staying with Hugi, a fun gentleman with an interesting history - his story to tell - and a flair for playing the harmonica overtop classic rock tunes. He's nailed Piano Man. Aside from the boys and I Hugi has two other guests staying with him right now: Barbara, a teacher from NYC, and Kareem, a primary school teacher from Paris. Everyone is on their own different adventure this summer, but here we all are, at Hugi's, getting to know each other and exploring this amazing country together with Hugi as our guide. Yes, aside from providing a place to sleep and wailing harmonica solos, Hugi is a tour guide, and he's showing us around. (He's the fella in yella if you followed that link.) Convenient eh? For all of us.
The kids and I arrived early yesterday morning, and took a bus from the airport into Reykjavik where Hugi picked us up. Barbara was already in the car. First stop was our new home for the nexy few days, and then it was off to the grocery store to pick up some food. After dropping off the food we then headed to pick up Kareem and now that we were six, it was time to start exploring Reykjavik.
Our first stop was Hallgrimskirkja, a Lutheran church named after the poet/clergyman Hallgrimur Peturssun, it was built between 1945 and 1986, and is just super darn cool.
After spending a bit of time there we then began a walk through the city, Hugi as our guide. It became quite apparent in a short period of time, that while the boys and I had the desire to be taking this walk, we were in fact quickly becoming zombies. This is fair given we didn't really sleep on the plane and we'd been up more than 24 hours by now. So Hugi took us home for a nap and then continued showing Barbara and Kareem about. I do not have pictures of either of those events.
We awoke three hours later, magically restored, and had a quick bite to eat (yay for having bought food). Hugi and the others arrived while we were doing that, and then we all headed out to The Blue Lagoon. And no, not a Brooke Shields marathon at a revival theatre. Something more like this:
And this:
The Blue Lagoon is, as Hugi's tells us, a bit of an accident. Behind it steams away one of Icelands many geothermal power plants. Iceland's use of fossil fuels by the way is a woppingly low 1% of their overall energy consumption needs. Everything else is renewable -either geothermal, or hydroelectric. Pretty neat. For it's complete origin story you can go here, but the very short version is that waste water from the geothermal plant started pooling outside of the plant, and that people, I assume hoping they would soon gain superpowers, started bathing in it. While no one started flying or smashing things, they did seem to get better skin. And voila, Blue Lagoon was born.
It's a pretty cool place, and also kinda expensive - which I understand is somewhat the norm for Iceland. But what do you expect, we're on a small island in the middle of the North Atlantic, that is attempting to join the EU, with tourism as it's number two industry and rising. Things are going to cost.
Wafting along through the warm, milky blue waters. Standing under a hot waterfall as the water pounds the tension out of your shoulders. Sitting in a sauna trying to remember how to breathe?
Totally worth it.
After a few relaxing hours there Hugi took the scenic route home. The "scenic route" is a secondary road that loops around back into Reykjavik. It was very expensive to build, and does not see alot of traffic, and we are all thankful to the tax payers of Iceland for their efforts.
Along the way we went to Seltun Krysuvik, a park that provides access to the geothermal field there and it's mud pots and hot springs.
The smell takes a bit of getting used to, but not much. Certainly easier than the pigs in Charlevoix, and the higher up you go (and we got up reasonably high) the fresher the air.
Oh, and there are horses frollicking in the field across from this "park".
Choices. Alway choices.
We then headed on by way of vista after gorgoues vista, each turn providing something else amazing to look at. If I were to include all the pictures the group of us took, the page wouldn't load. If Hugi had stopped the car each time one of us thought it might be a good idea, we would still be out there. Life is about balance though, and I think we're doing pretty good with it so far. One nice thing I will say for travelling in a small group though is that it does afford the luxury of stopping alot more than if we were with a coach group.
And how many tours will take you to see the drying remains of fish carcasses? Ya? Ya? That's what WE did. And honestly, pretty cool. Just outside one of the towns we passed where there is a large fish freezing plant, there is an area where there are racks and racks of fish carcasses drying. Essentially once the fish is filleted the remains are hung to dry, and these, once prepared are sold various places around the world to be used in soups, as the bones are still rich in nutrients. So ya, pretty cool.
We eventually got home. Now the neat thing about couch surfing AND touring with Hugi, is that, to begin with, we're all similarly like-minded people, as we chose to join the network and try and see parts of the world through hanging out with the strangers who are just the friends we haven't met yet. So once we got home we all got busy making dinner, while Hugi got the tunes going, and pulled out his harmonica and played along. Soon enough some of us are singing along, and eventually we're sitting around the table, talking about the day, talking about the next day, sharing our personal stories, playing games, becoming friends.
Honestly, as amazing as Iceland is, the best part of yesterday was meeting Hugi, Kareem, and Barbara. I can only hope that this year continues the way our first day off the continent did.
Now we're off to hike up a waterfall.
It looks amazing. Sounds like you are off to a great start. Having a hard time not burning up with jealousy. Or maybe that's just the hot flashes. Hugs to all.
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