A 14-hour excursion may not have been the best idea the day after a long flight, while battling jet lag. Fortunately I managed to keep my eyes open long enough to take in some really amazing sights in Iceland.
Friday was an all-day "Golden Circle" bus tour. Our tour guide rocked, which always helps. This was our view on the way to our first stop:
First stop was a set of hot springs. No, we didn't take a dip. There are natural hot springs all over the country and the Icelanders harness the energy and use it to power their towns as well as to provide hot water for showers and kitchens.
This is a pipeline that carries hot spring water several miles to a town so people can use it for showers, etc. I asked the guide (who spoke English quite well) to confirm several times. I just couldn't believe that the water could travel such a long distance and retain enough heat to be useful.
Next stop was a national park. Beautiful waterfalls, both large and small. In this particular location, the water just seemed to stream out of the rocks.
Our next stop was the glacier. It took quite a long time to get there, so I got to take a nap. The pic below is of a glacier, not our glacier. But our glacier was not so picturesque, so you get this one.
The landscape changed drastically as we climbed. The guide told us it was unusual to see so much run-off from the glacier that it created streams. Global warming at work.
Watching out the window, I could have sworn I was on Mars. Nothing grew except some particularly tenacious patches of moss.
We finally made it to the edge of the glacier:
This was the tiny outpost at the edge of the glacier. Occasionally its used as a research base for teams that travel out onto the glacier to collect data.
This was the beast we climbed into to drive out onto the ice. Our guide and his father had bought a missle-carrier and spent 18 months converting it into a passenger vehicle that they use to deliver us to the top of the glacier. The tubing connected to the tires allows them to change tire pressure on the fly.
The ice.
The black rocks were remnants of the volcano explosion that happened 2 years ago - the one that disrupted air traffic across Europe for several days.
We were told that the snow that fell at the end of last winter had finally melted off and this was the first week you could see the blue ice. They were very excited about the blue ice. We nodded and smiled. Yes, very pretty. Can we move on now, its getting chilly.
On the way to the top of the glacier we stopped to pick up the Snowcat that our guide and his dad had left up there. Some of us were lucky enough to get to ride inside.
There was a point in our drive where we passed a rainbow. We passed it again in the same place on the way back down. We were told its there more often than not.
We stopped at the top to "drink 400-year old water". Tasted like the stuff that comes out of the tap, but we didn't tell them that.
Coming down off the glacier:
Our next stop was another national park. This one contained the continental divide. To take this picture, I'm standing on the edge of the North American plate. There's a miles-wide valley between it and the edge of the EurAsian plate across the park. The edge of the plate crumbles and falls off as it moves. Looking right:
Looking left:
Next stop was a geyser park. I've never seen one in person, so I thought this was pretty spiffy.
Our last stop of the day was Gullfoss Waterfall. It drops far below what you can see in this picture, because I'm standing away from the edge. We were able to walk on a trail on the left and follow it right out onto the rocky outcropping that juts out into the falls on the left. Like all the other places we'd visited that day, there were very few safety measures - just a warning sign here or a little rope there. I thought of Mr. Pellegrino as I was leaning over the string barrier to get a better picture.
The quality of the pictures deteriorates here at the end of the trip 1) because it was raining again as it had off and on all day and 2) it was approaching 9 pm. Dusk lasted nearly 2 hours up here near the Arctic Circle. Its hard to explain the quality of the light, but it was unlike anything I'd ever experienced in Massachusetts. Thus ended Day 1 in Iceland.
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