Iceland I: the Geysirs and the Ponies

At a certain point in the year, I got really insistent that 2024 was THE YEAR to go to Iceland.

I’d tried to go some years earlier (7?), but had been thwarted by the plane company Wow! going bankrupt a few weeks before our supposed flight.

So 2024 was the year for Iceland Take Two.

A feeling based largely on online ~~articles~~ adverts which told me that the Northern lights might be the strongest they had ever been that year.

After mentioning it about 2000 times including in response to Sameer asking questions like ‘should we go out for dinner- where would you like to go?’ (‘Iceland’), the hint that was dropped with the subtlety of a large whale was picked up.

And off we went.

And, Dear Friends, We Saw the lights!

But more on that later.

Flying into Iceland itself is a pretty amazing experience, because you get to see all the insane shapes of the land below. As someone who is firmly an aisle seat person, this might be the one time I’d recommend to go for the window.

Our first dinner in Reykjavik was a good one- at a place called Icelandic Street Food, which we ended up returning to later in the trip. They had lamb, tomato or seafood soup, of which we didn’t like the seafood and didn’t try the tomato but loved the lamb (Kjotsupa). Plus, if you bought it in the bread bowl, it came with free refills.

We also went for a Plokkfiskur- a kind of fish mashed potato, which is also supposed to be one of the ‘foods you must try in Iceland’, and is slightly nicer than it sounds but still very fishy.

After dinner we went for a little walk, with the plan to head as far away from the city lights a possible to see if we could see some Aurora.

Which we did!

Sameer spotted it first, and generally had a much better eye for it throughout the trip- being more skilled at seeing the different colours, which were often quite hard to pick up by eye.

The more vibrant greens- and later, reds and pinks- tend to be visible primarily via long-exposure. To the eye, it looks more like slightly coloured flickering smoke, that isn’t behaving the way that clouds should behave.

After our first glimpse, which happened fairly immediately after beginning our walk we tried a few more locations, but didn’t get much luck.

So we headed home, and caught some sleep

And then, in the morning, we woke up, loaded up on a little bus, and heading out of the city.

We’d chosen to do a 6 day tour around the island, mostly due to neither of us being drivers.

It was expensive, but I can’t recommend it enough. Iceland has a very special quality of being endlessly beautiful in so many different ways. I’d spend half of the driving time just staring out the windows at the passing landscape, only to have Sameer tap me on the shoulder and point out an entirely different landscape happening out his window.

On the first day of the tour, our very first stop was Thingvellir National Park.

Most of Iceland’s natural drama comes from the fact that the Island is situated at the meeting of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. Thingvellir lies in a rift valley that is a product of the two plates slowly moving away from each other. It has some of the most active geysers and hot springs due to the friction of the plates (although we didn’t see those there), and is also historically significant for the country, being the site of the annual parliament gathering in Iceland from 903-1798.

This was our first view up close of the incredible rock formations- including ‘frozen flow’ rocks.

We spent a little bit of time wandering around the park, and then headed back towards the bus.

(And I became a bit obsessed with these ice crystals thrusting themselves up from the earth while we were waiting for the others- even the soil is violent here!!)

Destination #2 was a big one- Haukadalur Geothermal Area to see the Geysirs.

The Great Geysir- the one that named all of the worlds geysers, has been dormant since the early 2000s, so wasn’t quite up for visitors….

But there was still plenty to see:

Hubble-y Bubbley?

The problem about Iceland is that pictures can’t do any of it any justice. But still.

LOOK AT THAT COLOUR PALETTE!

The star of the show is Spring Strokkur, a hot spring that erupts every five to ten minutes- to the great delight of all the tourists.

We spent a few minutes waiting to try to catch it in the act for some gif glory:

Triptych.
Times Tri

We were given a couple of hours to wander around the park and to eat lunch- which we maximised by minimising the ‘lunch eating’ part.

We did pay an OBSCENE amount for a sandwich, which would have cost about 3 bucks anywhere else in the world but came out at 14 pounds or so. This event traumatised me long-term, and made us stock up on crackers and ham to nibble on the bus for the rest of the journey.

Our next destination was a very quick horsey stop.

Stocky boys!

Apparently Iceland has a very certain breed of horse that can travel with something called the 5th gait, which involves three hooves being on the ground at any one time.

Very stable.

Very good for building butt muscles.