A land of Ice and Fire.

Mountains, waterfalls, hot springs, geysers, glaciers, volcanoes, caves, ice lagoons... Nature does not seem to scrimp on any wonder in this beautiful country. We spent 10 days in Iceland, staying in Reykjavik and traveling around the southern part of the country, trying to sample a little bit of everything.

All the photos are here:

Volcano hike

Ice lagoon

Vatnajökull glacier

Thingvellir National Park

Gulfoss

Geysir

Reykjavik and around

Eyjafjallajökull volcano hike:

We hiked up to the top of the notorious volcano Eyjafjallajökull, which erupted in 2010 causing weeks of chaos to all air traffic across the Atlantic.Volcanic ash is still strewn for many hundreds of kilometers to the south and east. We actually walked all the way to the still-warm crater, where the lava is still smoldering from the 2010 eruption, and steam is coming out of vents in the ground. We climbed around 1100 meters to reach this point, walking on a mountain pass called Fimmvörðuháls in between 2 glaciers, and from there, came downhill for the next 6 hours through the steepest, craziest slopes that even goats would think twice about. Thank god for the few chains and ropes on our way, but nevertheless, I am amazed that we're still alive to tell the story :)

Vatnajökull - Europe's largest glacier (!!):

We climbed a section of Vatnajökull, using special crampons on our shoes and ice axes to pierce through the ice. We inspected some beautiful ice tunnels and caves carved by water, and felt quite overwhelmed knowing that we were walking on ice that was formed thousands and thousands of years ago (the last ice age even!). Apparently (according to our guide), nearly a 100 meters thick snow would have to be compressed to less than 1 cm thickness to form the kind of ice we were on. And imagine the force needed to accomplish that compression - there had to be that much snow over it to weigh it down as much. And this ice was about 200 meters thick on average, even at the edge of the glacier where we were walking (some above and a lot below the ground). On the way to this ice, we were walking on brown soil like material, but on going closer we realized that this was quite shaky ground since there was ice beneath it! And you heard parts breaking away and falling down as you were walking! It was surreal, to say the least.

Jökulsárlón ice lagoon:

We went boating in the ice lagoon which was just spectacular. Huge icebergs of different colors and shapes just floating about in a blue lagoon. Ice with different stories to tell. It was really like living in a dream. The lagoon is a mix of fresh water from the melting glaciers and sea water, which prevents it from freezing even in winter. But apparently, the James bond folks didn't like that when they came to inspect the site for shooting 'Die another day'. They wanted the lagoon completely frozen for the exciting car chase sequence in the movie. So they spent a month there, building a new embankment to prevent the sea water from entering the lagoon, waited for a few weeks until  the lagoon completely froze, and did their shooting. And finally, this part in the movie which was eagerly anticipated by the Icelanders for all the trouble they had been put through, lasted 30 seconds. 30 bloody seconds!

Gulfoss and Geysir:

This day's visit was to Gulfoss (the golden fall), and a geyser called Strokkur which went off magnificently every 5 minutes or so to a height of about 25-30 metres! This Strokkur was located right by the side of the great 'geysir', the original phenomenon that lent this Icelandic word to describing all other geysers in the world. 

Thingvellir national park:

This is a Unesco world heritage sight, as it was the seat of the first Icelandic parliament called alÞingi established in the year 930 when the first settlers came to Iceland. But for me, the fascinating thing about this place is that this is where the Eurasian and American continental plates meet. There are many rifts and a valley filled with a lake here, on one side of which is technically America and the other side Europe. And as these two continental plates are pulling further and further apart, this valley is sinking every year by a few centimeters! We were technically standing on newly forming, uncharted, no man's land, when we were there.

But wait. Depending on how screwed up you are, the coolest thing of the day was yet to happen to us. We were quite bored with our big tour group, and just wandered off by ourselves when everyone else was crowding up at a cafe. What did we meet? We ran into a 'game of thrones' shooting set!!! We heard that they were filming at several different locations in Iceland this summer. We didn't meet any Lannisters or Starks since the area was obviously cordoned off, but apparently, Arya and the Hound were in the set that day. We came back home and checked that it was real. Here are photos taken in the spot on the same day we were there: http://winteriscoming.net/2013/07/day-19-photos-from-the-thingvellir-shoot/ 

and a video interview with Chris Newman: http://www.visir.is/section/MEDIA99&fileid=CLP19996

Lava caves:

Just a little west of Reykjavik, we went caving underground, into a lava cave, and had a small adventure there since we (along with our guide) got lost and suddenly had to crawl out (and round and round eventually) much more seriously than on our way in. We somehow managed to come out after an hour of wondering whether a new volcano had altered the cave after we went in. It's not unusual to expect that in Iceland when they tell you that they have 130 volcanoes and some kind of eruption happens every second or third year.

Reykjavik area:

And last but not the least, Reykjavik is a charming little city. Cozy cafes, cute streets lined with little shops and crazy colored roofs, a beautiful harbor, the lush green gardens around the pond Tjornin and a really tall and pretty church.

We spent the rainy days playing chess in cafes and reading the famous Icelandic sagas at the local bookstore. It's a strange feeling to just get out a few kilometers from Reykjavik, and see the road winding through acres and acres of just lava fields. Solid lava where some moss is growing in patches here and there. Less than 10% of all of iceland is covered in trees, and It's no wonder that this is described as a lunar landscape, where even a patch of green grass after the desolateness of lava seems very fertile. We saw some geothermal power stations, and apparently all the hot water in Iceland is just directly out of the hot springs. Water is not heated using any energy, and in fact this hot water is what is used to heat up the homes too.

We also went out to the sea one day to do some bird and whale watching. We saw a lot of arctic terns, northern gannets and the most special thing of all - puffins. We saw lots and lots of shy-free, friendly dolphins but no luck with the whales.

All in all, it was just spectacular scenery, and we couldn't get enough of it.