Lava fields, hot pots, geysers, waterfalls, lagoons, and more - Welcome to Reykajvik, Iceland!!

Velkomin to Iceland!

After our M/S Expedition ship landed early on a Tuesday morning, the 123ish of us either went to our hotels to check in or just wandered around town. I was one who went to check in... I originally was scheduled to leave that afternoon, BUT a month or so ago I was thinking, "when in the world will I go to Iceland again?" So I changed my flight so that I could spend 3 full extra days there, thinking that was more than enough for this small country capital. I was waaay wrong, I could have probably entertained myself for another week easily, and I almost was kicking myself for not spending more time there. But alas, everything worked out.

It was funny because as I mentioned, we were all milling about the city, and one could hardly walk a few yards before we would run into someone from the ship and start chatting. What would be a 5 minute walk became a 15 minute walk. It was kinda nice, to be honest! I felt like I knew the whole town!

Unfortunately, we got so sidetracked with running into people, we saw about 1/10th of the sights we wanted to see. Oh well. One of those is pictured below, the famous Hallgrimskirkja Church, which was VERY modern. There wasn't a stair climbing option to get to the top (ohh.... darn), but we still got some cool views (after we took the elevator up!) of the city and then M/S Expedition ship we had just gotten off of!

Besides the dreary and cloudy whether that we got the 1st day, Reykjavik is a small but quaint town. I didn't know what to expect. The ONLY things I have heard is how the whole country declared bankruptcy a few years ago AND with the recent volcano (March 2010), I assumed things were not looking good for Iceland. But again, I was wrong. Everything seemed to be running smoothly and it seemed there were a lot of tourists, which I was surprised to see (who goes to Iceland for a vacation? Well, besides me of course!). I talked to a few, and it seems many cruises stop there as well as people transit to/from Europe there. Yes there were some empty storefronts, but these days, where aren't there empty store fronts?

I quickly connected with some people from the ship and spent the next few days doing some power sightseeing. A friend let me join her that first day while she was getting a photography lesson in a remote place where we literally almost fell off a cliff. No joke. We were 4-wheeling on some "roads" (even calling it that is exaggerating) and went a little off where we were supposed to go, and next thing I knew our jeep was no more than a few inches from toppling over. I admit I got nervous and Dawne even caught me crossing myself in the back seat... and I'm not even a religious person. Fortunately, Tony saw that we were nervous and let us out while he navigated. Phew, we made it. Once we relaxed and were on normal roads again, we made it to the "secret" waterfall and saw some beautiful landscape.

That night to "detox" we went to a hot pot, what Iceland is famous for. The hot pots are naturally heated geothermal pools and it is a super relaxing way to chill out and end (or start!) your day. Although I have been to hot springs in the States (Colorado), which reek of sulfur, this actually had a faint smell of it and was very detoxing. We went to Laugardalur hot pot, which we were the only foreigners, and I was surprised how busy it was for a Tuesday night! I noticed not only there but everywhere in Iceland everyone has really great skin... it is not just the hot pots that are geothermic, the water itself is. We even were "warned" that it was normal that the hot water may smell a little at the hotel. It was SUCH a treat and soo relaxing to just lounge around and relax in the hot pot in the cool open air.

Here is a random awesome sunset picture from a high rise in Reykjavik:

The next day we did the Golden Circle Tour with Tony. Again, he is a private guide/photographer that my friend Dawne was using to teach her how to use the camera. It was nice to tag along with them because we could stop when we wanted and take as long as we wanted at some locations. The Golden Circle included Kerio crater, Geysir hot spring, Gullfoss waterfall, and Pingvellir National Park. They were pretty cool, the Kerio crater has a lake filled it with rainfall,

but when it is dry it has served as somewhat of a concert venue and even Bjork has had a concert there. Geysir hot springs I have to say was probably a highlight for me. It was soo cool to see an erupting geyser!

I could have stood there for hours and luckily one in particular erupted every 5 minutes, so I got ample video and pictures of it erupting! The temperature of the springs is a whopping 250 deg C. Ouch! Don't touch that!! The Gullfoss waterfall was pretty spectacular as well... can't go wrong with a BIG waterfall, especially on a beautiful sunny day and with rainbows in the background!

We then went to a hidden area at the Pingvellir National Park and found yet another waterfall and pretty flowers,

and later that night we went back there to try and see the Northern Lights again. Of course it was a beautiful sunny day the whole day and a few minutes after we got there some nice clouds started rolling in,

and didn't stop the whole night. Oh well... my memory of the actual Aurora borealis that we saw on the boat is as livid and memorable as can be!

But anyhoo, as we were on a private tour we stopped at a lava field and the ground was soo soft and squishy, it was soooo fun to walk on it.

We also stopped a couple of times to see the Iceland horses, the ONLY breed of horse you will see in Iceland. They came to Iceland in the 9th and 10th centuries and there are something like 90,000 in Iceland today. There are 40ish colors of the horse and they have a funny shaggy mane, AND their full grown figure is actually pretty small. I had to hold my tongue a few times and call them ponies, which I heard is utterly offensive . They are so unique to Iceland because they do not import ANY horses and if an Icelandic horse is taken abroad, they are not allowed back in. Another interesting fact, they are also one of the rare breeds of horses that actually lie down when sleeping. Kinda funny.

Besides horses, we saw plenty of sheep. I don't know if it was just me, but they looked definitely well fed!

Here's a cool thing we saw, the Thingvellir Lake, or as we called it, "the Thing." Basically in it is a fissure that dividing the American and the Euroasian continents! You can actually scuba dive or snorkel in the actual crack, which some of my friends did, BUT again I was a wussy and there was NO way that I was going to suffer in -2 to -4 C or 24-28 degree F water temperature. Eek! And I thought the 30 something degrees that people jumped in the Greenland Sea was cold! NYET!

Finally the last day in the morning I went to the Blue Lagoon, the most famous attraction in Iceland. It is a combination of geothermal and sea water mixed together deep under the lava fields of the Reykjanes Peninsula. Again, this is known to have positive effects on the skin because of the natural minerals, silica and algea in the water. The avg temperature is between 100-104 degrees and because it is in a big open "pool" you actually come across many different temperature as you are waddling along. I, a couple of times, would yelp out loud because it suddenly got so hot, and then I would move about a foot over and then it would be comfortable again. Besides them having little buckets of natural mud to put on your skin, it was just nice to waddle along and enjoy the atmosphere and beautiful scenery around. It is also nice because it happens to be a mere 20 minutes from the airport and they specifically cater towards those people to either come there in transit, or before flights. Awesome, huh?

Above do you see me behind the lava rocks near the bottom right? :-)

After maxin' and relaxin' in the lagoon, Dawne and I met up and did some pow-wow souvenir shopping/window shopping! It was a lot of fun and being that the "shopping center" consists of about 3 streets that we had passed through many times, we had an idea of where to go. We both bought volcano rock jewelery and volcano rock candles, amongst other little things. I guess Iceland used to be even more expensive than Norway (which is EXPENSIVE), but because of all the recent mishaps, people say it is 50% cheaper than what it used to be.... which I couldn't even imagine how expensive it must have been. I wouldn't call it "cheap," I would probably say it is comparable to the States.

And finally, as again, 1/2 the ship stayed a few extra days to sightsee, we frequently ran into and had meals with our Expedition friends.

So there you have it! Can't believe I was in Iceland! There is soooooooooooooooooooo much to do (cool fjords and waterfalls, glaciers, quaint villages, volcano's, horseback riding, 4-wheeling, hiking, more hot pots and thermal areas, on and on!) and although I don't like to visit a place twice, I would probably re-visit Iceland again... I just couldn't get enough of the fresh air and again, the beautiful landscape.

Final thoughts: Funny how Greenland is all ice and Iceland is all green!

p.s. Below is a video I took of the erupting geysir, check it out!

Ice-pedition

80 degrees north. Just 10 degrees shy of the North Pole. This is a quest in the late 1800's and early 1900's that explorers like Roald Amundsen (1st to reach South Pole, 1st to fly over North Pole) took months of preparation, in fact years, and yet here we were aboard the M/S Expedition GAP Arctic Circle tour when it was announced that we were going to reach this great latitude. I immediately thought of my globe at home and how if I were looking at it, I would actually have to tilt it to see where I was headed. It's those little things that are exciting traveling.

To back track a little, I had plans to go to Norway to do a sort of fellowship at a Rehabilitation Center in Oslo. I actually had a discount on any tour from a tour that was previously cancelled so I looked around and found this one, which happened to be 50% off. With my extra 20% off, it was an unbeatable deal. What it entailed was a 14-day Expedition starting from Longyearben, Spitsbergen (which I had to look up where it was, by the way. It's an island north of Norway and part of Norway), and toured all along East Greenland and finally disembarked at Reykjavik, Iceland.

How cool is that? Needless to say, I have never been on a cruise before and I really didn't know what to expect. I actually expected a little boat that I would sleep in a little cabin that was approximately 2m by 2m and eating canned beans. Ok, exaggerating a little bit, but I have to say I was VERY pleasantly surprised and impressed by not only the ship but all the amenities that were on board.

Below is the best place of the ship, we called it "the room with a view"

And the food, the food! This was probably the only thing that was somewhat similar to an actual cruise. Here is an example of a menu and a dish:

Being that I really didn't know what to expect, as saw from my comments above, I can now say that this really was a trip of a lifetime. When I look at pictures, which do not amount to 1/billionth of justice, I almost feel as if the whole experience was a dream. I've never ever EVER seen such beauty in my life. I do love nature, but the vastness of the fjords, ice burgs, glaciers, mountains and cool rocks that I saw are just out of this world.

Yes, I do admit that when I heard about the possible wildlife we may see, polar bears, walruses, seals, whales etc, I did anxiously expect these things. Although we saw most things we wanted to see, never mind the polar bear that was pretty much a white spec on the horizon, I still saw it! This is the spec, seriously, the white thing in the middle:

and this is a picture I took of a zoomed in picture of the polar bear we saw from afar, ha ha:

The desire for wildlife quickly melted into an astonishment of the surreal landscapes and nature we saw. Later, when we actually were close to musk ox,

whales (below is a humpback whale):

and dolphins, yes, it was exciting, but I was still memorized by the landscape around us as well as the fresh air.

Ahh... the fresh air, that is something I will never forget. And the starry skies with the added bonus of..... AURORA BOREALIS! Again, NOT something I was expecting until there was wind we may see it. The 1st night I saw streaks of white, and thought,"eh.... this is what the excitement is about?" Whatever. It came and then vanished. I went to bed unimpressed. The 2nd night after I missed a 2am wake-up call to see it and later heard people gushing how cool it was I vowed to stay up "late: (which for me seemed to be around 10:30-11ish) and see it. Luckyfor my beauty sleep (ha ha), it came around 10:30 ish. What we witnessed is really a lifetime experience and can't even be described. The Northern Lights is truly something amazing and that one person has to see in person. It took up the whole sky and was swooshing and swiveling and we didn't even know where to look! "Over there!" and we would all rush to one side of the boat. Then, "look! It's over there" and then we would rush to the other side." Granted, this is fairly typical of being on the boat and still makes me laugh. But anyway, the Aurora went up in vertical streaks, in squiggly parts, and had hints of purple/pink on top of the typical green, just AMAZING! We were beside ourselves with excitement and I can visually see it my head like I am just now looking at it. I knew my dinky point and shoot wouldn't come close to catching it, so for once I didn't have my nose in the camera and just watched the spectacle. Later, I took other people's pictures, which again, DOES NOT represent 1/billionth of what we saw! I know there are more spectacular ones out there with yellows and oranges, but hey, I am DEFINITELY happy with what I saw!!!

I'll let the pictures do the talking, but from zodiac cruises to iceburgs to the cute little plants we saw (yes, there is vegetation in the Arctic, albeit scarce!):

and animals such as the arctic fox and arctic hare,

and of course birds,

to the BIG things like seals and whales (below is the Blue Whale, one of the largest there is! And sorry, it really was hard to see and the way we could identify that it was a blue whale was that it exhaled every 5-7 minutes and has a specific fin):

and going through the largest fjord in the world and going through literally uninhabited and unvisited areas, it was just an amazing trip! East Greenland is absolutely spectacular and one of my favorite memories is going by zodiac through these amazingly humongous iceburgs... the air (and us from amazement!) was so quiet that all you could hear was the crackling of the ice. It was a cloudy morning at first, but then the sun came shining and then came the majestic reflections of the iceburgs in the water and again, if my own eyes weren't seeing it, I could have sworn I was dreaming.

Another favorite memory is while we were at sea going through the Denmark strait, having a lazy sea day, we hear an announcement saying there were a group of Orca whales just in front of the boat. Literally, I have never seen such immediate mass pandemonium. EVERYONE got up and were running in all directions, some for their cameras, some to go to their room to get their coats, and others towards the bow to take pictures. LUCKILY I was in the last group and it was soooooo cool to see not one, not two, but up to 5 Orca whales feeding and swimming literally just yards from the boat. Finally, something up close and personal and not something I would literally have to tell people what it is, i.e. "I swear, that white dot is a polar bear. Oh, and that black dot is a seal"). Haha! Again, I took a few snaps because I knew I would borrow some from other passengers with their fancy cameras and just admired and watched the whales swimming along. "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming"... (Finding Nemo is one of my favorite movies), I thought. And they did! They are such amazing creatures, really. And luckily throughout the trip we not only saw Orca whales, but we also saw the Blue Whale, one of the biggest in the whale family, and Fin and Minke whales. Here are a few picts of the big group of Orca whales we saw:

Which, by the way, the one with the big fin is the male and the smaller fin, the female.

Out of the many cool things we did besides zodiac tours,

we stopped in the village of Ittoqqortoormiit, with a whopping population of 469 as of 2010. Although we had earlier been given a lecture on the Inuk inhabitants of this area, Inuk being an Inuit person (Inuit is another term used for Eskimo), for some reason it didn't digest that I would not be seeing typical Scandinavian features of blond hair and blue eyes. Oops. Besides feeling awkwardly ignorant about this, I was taken aback on the beauty of this population.... and the similarity (to me) of the features to Mongolians.

What I did listen to is the background... Ittoqqortoormiit (try saying that 3 times fast) is located on Liverpool Land on the eastern border of Greenland and besides being known for its wildlife, it is also known for the hunting of whales and polar bears, which is a major cultural-economical factor there. Luckily for this area (I'm not going to write it out again), being in the middle of nowhere practically and with the presence of sea ice, their large populations of shrimp and halibut are not exploited. Phew. We also got to see Greenlandic dogs, i.e. huskie dogsledding dogs, and that was SUPER interesting to see. They are a purebreed type of dog, and as we were talked to the owner of the dogs Gary, who BTW, has a great website of all his adventures, www.garyrolfe.com, they "were born to pull massive payloads in bruttle cold." It was so interested to learn about the care and effort that goes into dogsledding, not only for the humans, but for the dogs. Although some were scary,

the other ones were super cute, like these below,

and the puppy below, and I am just flabbergasted on what they go through.

During the "off-season" they go through hours of rigorous training in preparation for dogsledding in the winter, which the owner of the 16 of them takes them out by himself for literally months at a time. I think he said that in the winter he primarily feeds them seal fat in combination with dog food and also doesn't brush them as much so that they can keep the hair for warmth. One of the Canadians I was sitting next to actually recognized him from this show that featured wildlife adventures and he was a guest! Kinda cool!

And no trip is complete of mine without 029384203 picture of sunsets. Here are my fave's:

And as always, sometimes a trip defines itself by the people you meet, and I was fortunate to have a great group of people on the ship. I had a great roommate and met truly interesting people. It only takes a trip to the Arctic to put yourself in your place with travels. I had always thought I was fortunate to have done the travels I have, BUT I probably was in the minority of people that have traveled to exotic places. I think 1/2 the boat had been to Antarctica and I met a couple that had been to 130+ countries. My 40ish seemed something to laugh at! So I hope to be in touch with those people if not as friends but travel friends. Always looking for travel buddies! :-)

p.s. As I mentioned, most of the pictures here are mine, but others are from fancy cameras that we exchanged amongst ourselves. So thank you to those people!!

p.s.s Here are a couple of remaining fun picts, me being goofy and us... seriously, bumping into an ice burg! We were actually were set for the night and literally the iceburg bumped into us and we really had to work a little to get out! At first it was funny, then a little scary (Titanic anyone?), and then funny again. I temporarily almost forgot about the Northern Lights while we were trying to get away from this ice burg!