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| Wbat we were in Iceland for! |
We left Paris in 32˚ C weather, successfully making our way
to Charles De Gaulle airport via public transportation . We got off the plane some 5 hours later to
wind, rain, and 4˚C weather in Keflavik, Iceland’s main airport. The sharp wind was a shock as we walked
across the tarmac to the terminal.
Before we’d come to Spain, Todd and I had discussed—briefly—the possibility
of being stationed in Iceland, a move that we hoped would help get us to Spain,
since Iceland was a “hardship tour” for a year, and Rota its reward. Those plans were squashed when the U.S.
closed the base in 2007.
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| Lava, lava everywhere |
We drove to our Flying Viking Guesthouse, nearly pushed off
the road several times in our heavily-loaded Nissan Micra by gale-force
winds. Once we were settled at the
guesthouse, a non-descript place despite its enticing name, we ventured out into
Reykjavik, layering on nearly all the clothes we’d brought. Sticker shock hit us pretty quickly—a meal of
2 appetizers, a bowl of soup and an entrée of bacon-wrapped minke whale cost
over $100. Welcome to Iceland!
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| Iceland: land of expansive vistas |
Iceland Air offers a free stopover for all intercontinental
flights, which has increased the tourism drastically in this tiny country of
only 335,000 inhabitants, 2/3 of whom live in the greater Reykjavik area. 2015 was the first year in which tourism
surpassed fishing as the nation’s economic heavyweight.
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| Impressive Iceland |
Despite its tiny size, Iceland fielded a men’s soccer team
that beat England in the Olympic games this summer, while their women’s team is
undefeated AND unscored-on this season, securing them a spot in the
International Games. They also have
managed to put together a basketball team good enough to compete at the ___
games. Quite impressive—Icelanders are
clearly from hardy Viking stock!
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| On the bank just before Godafoss |
The next day we left the rain in Reykjavik behind, heading
northwest up the Ring Road, a two-lane highway that circumnavigates the island. This is Iceland’s biggest and most-traveled
road, but still, we saw few other cars once we left the capital. We got lost for a while looking for
waterfalls on the way to the Icelandic Goat Center, and Todd remained incensed
about the price of the tour ($38 for our family of four through the goat barn)
which in his mind rapidly increased to 90 euros and more. Yes, pricey for the priviledge of stomping
through goat poop, but the little goats are so sweet, the big goats so gorgeous
(several of them had starred in episodes of Game of Thrones), and we got a
bonus tour of the kitten families in the stables next door.
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| We loved the goats |
The scenery is spectacular, wild and otherworldly, with
steam vents on occasion, the vegetation turning gold and red moving into
autumn. We kept a lookout for a sign
with a head in waves and a thermometer, which indicated some sort of geothermal
pool. In Bakkaflotbar we found one, a
sterile tile-and-concrete no-frills affair with deliciously hot water in its
fiberglass tubs. There we met Mitch who,
small world!, had dated my cousin Lily in Carmichael, California. Funny.
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| Exploring the hot springs that burble up everywhere |
We drove on, relaxed and toasty from the sulphury water, to
a lovely apartment overlooking the bay with a view to Iceland’s second-largest
city, Akureyri (population 18,000). The
next day we headed off to Husavik for whale watching, as the weather in the
North was sunny and clear. Two humpbacks
and a pod of pilot whales later, we got off the water and headed towards more
geothermal excitement. Enroute to the
Myrvatn Nature Baths (aka the Mini-Blue-Lagoon), we climbed the Hverfall, a
beautifully symmetrical tephra crater, and gawked at the fumaroles and mud pots
of Namaskard. For every sight we saw, we
passed up 4 or 5 others, driving home the painful realization that a week in
Iceland is not nearly enough time to take it all in.
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| Roadside geology lesson |
The Myrvatn Baths were spectacular: large outdoor pools of varying temperatures
up on a ridge with an infinity-edge that dropped off into a valley of volcanic
peaks and mesas and ringed by clouds of varying greys, whites, and blues. At sunset the sky flamed golden for a good
half-hour, creating the most beautiful landscapes I’ve ever seen. We finally left at 9:30 pm, wrinkled and
waterlogged and thoroughly relaxed.
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| Steamy paradise |
We hustled out the next morning to head south again, having
barely explored the area. The guidebook
said that the inland F roads were meant for more-rugged 4x4s, so we returned
via the Ring Road after testing out for ourselves how ill-equipped our little
Micra rental car was on these gravelly, pot-hole-ridden lanes. (Todd said, in so many words, “Told you so.”)
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| Beautiful farms around every corner |
Next stop: The Golden
Circle. This is Iceland’s most visited
region, close to Reykjavik and accessible to layover travelers and a multitude
of tour buses, jeep tours, and Monster truck-vans. We rented a cute little cabin up on the
slopes with its own sulphur-water hot tub to explore the area.
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| Thermal beauty |
That evening we checked out the lake (the guidebook said the
lake was 104˚F, so we brought our swimsuits, but that must have been an average
temperature, because we found only either scalding hot or freezing cold lake
waters), and we headed over to Geysir, the birthplace of the name geyser for
these fabulous spectacles. Stand by the
roped-off area and watch the water roil and churn. Something is going on down there! Without warning the water and steam come
hurtling skyward with a deafening roar, all at once. Even if you are expecting it, it makes you
jump.
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| Perfect at sunset |
Icelandic horses (don’t call them ponies!) are
everywhere. Charming, shaggy,
long-maned, and friendly, these horses come in a variety of colors, many of
which don’t exist in other horse breeds.
We found a farm who could accommodate us later that day for a riding
tour, and headed over to Gullfoss waterfall.
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| Autumn around Godafoss falls up in the North |
Gullfoss is Iceland’s most famous falls, cascading down two
levels over basalt rock lips and a combined 32-meter drop to thunder through a
2-km gorge. In 1907, two Norwegian
entrepreneurs tried to buy the falls from farmer Bjorn Brosohn in order to dam
the river and create hydroelectric power; when he refused to sell (“Why would I
sell and destroy my friend Gullfoss?”), they overrode him and leased the rights
to the water from the Icelandic government.
Bjorn’s daughter Selfig started a campaign that lasted the rest of her
life to protect the falls from destruction, even threatening at one point to
throw herself over the falls if it came to that. Finally in 1927, the lease was cancelled due
to non-payment, and Gullfoss because Iceland’s most-visited waterfalls. They are spectacular and wild.
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| Spectacular |
That afternoon we saddled up on four sturdy Icelandic horses
with our guide, Marie, a Norwegian who had fallen in love with both the horses
and Iceland as well. Sasha rode Trixli,
a shaggy black guy with a curious white mark on his neck. I got Vlitka, a ginger-colored mare, while
Todd bounced along on Mosey. Tia got the
most gorgeous and, it turned out, the most accomplished tolter, Nero. Nero was that curious horse-color only seen
here, a brown that varied from dark to light, with a dark stripe down his
otherwise lighter-colored back. His
immense mane was nearly black, except for a cascade of blonde in the top
layer. Nero was an expert tolter. The tölt is a gait unique to the Icelandic
horse; it is a very smooth gate, between a walk and a trot that is extremely
comfortable over long distances. Tia’s
butt didn’t move out of the saddle, as Nero’s preferred gate was clearly the
tölt. The rest of us had to work a
little harder to find this smooth ride.
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| The tolting Icelandic horse |
We traveled up into the Icelandic countryside at a good
clip, moving alongside a rushing blue-turquoise river into the foothills. We forded streams and clopped at times
through thick mud, but mostly we tölted or galloped along lava-gravelled paths
through the autumn scrub forests.
Magical.
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| Tolting along |
That evening we were invited to dinner by Birna and Eli,
friends from El Puerto who had lived in the same flat owned by our friends
Conchi and Luis where we first started our Spanish adventure. We lolled about in their wonderfully steaming
hot tub to warm up after our ride. Birna
pulled out all the stops in her charming and quaintly decorated cabin that her
husband Eli had built over the years, serving us dried cod with butter, smoked
lamb on flatbread, Icelandic leg of lamb (Best. Lamb. Ever!!) and lamb
tenderloin with mushroom gravy, sautéed onions, roasted veggies and
potatoes. A Viking feast with skyr, the
local skim-milk-yoghurt-type dessert, and coffee to finish up, along with
hand-made chocolate truffles from Birna’s brother-in-law Hafladi, who owns a
world-class bakery in Mosfellbaer near Reykjavik. Hafladi’s son Siggy rounded out the dinner
guest list; although just 19, he spent the last 3 months volunteering in an
orphanage in South Africa, a looooong way away from Iceland!
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| Majestic waterfalls dot the island |
This year Todd and I decided to home-school the girls. The reasons were multiple, not necessarily in
this order: 1) They were 12 and 14,
still young enough to actually WANT to travel around with us; 2) We were
transitioning from Spain to the U.S., and they didn’t have an established
friend group there that they would miss; 3) After 5 years in Spanish public
school, they knew a great deal about Spanish and European history, but very
little about the U.S.; 4) They’d traveled extensively in Europe and Spain, but
almost nothing in the U.S. (that they could remember, at least!), and there are
many places in the U.S. that Todd and I have wanted to visit as well; and 5)
it’s been a lifelong dream for me to have just two students to focus all my
considerable teaching acumen on while designing the curriculum to take
advantage of all the cool places we would travel.
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| Definitely a place worth learning about! |
That education has begun here in Iceland. Iceland was formed on the Mid-Atlantic ridge
due to an additional hot spot in the Earth’s crust that spurted enough lava to
form this island. This information only
became available after the U.S. Navy mapped the ocean floor of the Atlantic,
revealing the Mid-Atlantic Ridge and confirmation of seafloor spreading and
movement of the continental plates. The Thingvellir National Park holds the
above-sea-level portion of this ridge, providing a close-up glimpse of tectonic
plates spreading at the rate of two inches per year. Their first quiz will be on Icelandic
geology!
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| Splitting the continents |
We walked the gorge between the North American and Eurasian
plates in a freezing rain, inadequately dressed despite our best
carry-on-suitcase-sized efforts. We read
the placards describing the Althing, the parliamentary meetings held each year
in Thingvellir, its broad valley stretching out across the European plate, with
the girls hurrying me from one landmark to the next in order to get back to the
car. It was beautiful and icy, and I
could only wonder what January here was like if mid-September was already so
sharp. We hightailed it back to our
little cabin to enjoy the sulphury hot tub one more time.
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| I was fascinated by this ridge...the girls, not so much |
After packing up and mopping the floor the next morning (no
cleaning fees = you do the cleaning), we headed to our new friend Haflidi’s
Mosfellbakari. Haflidi is an Icelandic
entrepreneur, having taken over an old bakery and transforming it into the most
decadent and lovely pastry/dessert/café shop I have yet seen. Haflidi spent several years learning his
trade, and became good enough to land a gig baking for the Sheik of Saudi
Arabia for four months as his personal chocolatier. We
chatted about Icelandic history over bowls of chicken curry soup, caramel
cinnamon buns, and almond twists, and Haflidi loaded us up with boxes of
chocolates when we left.
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| Our new lcelandic friend |
Our last night was spent on the Reykjanes peninsula in the
south, in a tiny new cabin on the edge of a lava field that met the ocean not
so long ago. Rare mosses covered the
black stones, and steaming thermal springs power the waters of the famous Blue
Lagoon. We spent the afternoon through
the evening there, smearing our faces with white silica mud repeatedly, and
lounging in the milky blue waters.
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| Corny but cool |
That night we snuggled down into our double-sized bunk
beds. “Who has looked for the Northern
Lights?” I joked, as the on-and-off rain
had squelched our hopes, along with the knowledge that September was often too
early to see them. Sasha peeked out the
window. “What are those?? I think I see them!” she shrieked. We all ran outside in the icy cold to gape at
the growing green illuminations, which spread across the sky underneath the Big
Dipper. We slipped in and out of the
house for the next fifteen minutes, marveling at the green glowing streaks
fringed with red, until the cloud cover blanketed the sky and hid them once
again.
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| Icelandic magic |
But what about the water slides Aunt Suzi had talked
about? We had not slid down a single
slide, nor visited a single public pool that exist in every small town. Luckily, the public pool at ___ on our way to
the airport was open, and two twisty-turny slides, one orange and one turquoise
blue, beckoned from the road. We stopped
for a last warm-water swim, enjoying the steaming water that burbled from the
top of the slide, rocketing down the dark rainbow-striped tubes, and hopping
from pool to pool before heading out to the airport.
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| Basic but fun |
Our most important realization? That Iceland, with all its spectacular beauty,
deserves another, longer visit!
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| We'll be back to visit you! |
