ICELAND DAY 3 – WATERS ON THE DIAMOND

(readers note: I changed the format, so the pictures follow the relevant paragraphs.  Be sure to read all the way to the end.  Click on any picture to see all the pictures in full size)

Although the locals use the term “fire and ice” all the time, this island is really about the water.  The water melting off the glaciers colors every facet of daily life.  Of course, there’s the excellent drinking water, and iconic white-snow peaks that are the wallpaper to daily life.  But when a volcano erupts, and they do frequently around these parts, the people worry less about lava and fire and ash (which cause damage to relatively few) and more about water.  The eruptions tend to quickly melt the glaciers, causing massive, devastating flooding.

Checked out of our hotel, today we’re all about the prettier, happier water, heading out to see the waterfalls, geological features and other sites of the Golden Circle.  The consummate day trip for travelers staying in Reykjavik, the Golden Circle is a 140-mile loop on the western side of the country that takes you to some absolutely beautiful sites.  Our first stop is Thingvellir National Park.  This is the Philadelphia of Iceland, the site where Iceland’s (and the world’s) first parliament was formed in 930.  But today, we’re here for the geology, as this is also the place where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates violently meet.  It seems that North America is winning, sliding up over the Eurasian plate and forming a tall, course, sheer cliff.  It’s the only place in the world where this North Atlantic Ridge is visible on land.  Walking beside it and looking down into the deep fissures caused by it, you can feel the brute power of the land masses.  Our easy 2-mile hike ends at the Oxararfoss waterfall, a broad cascade whose pool empties right into one of the main fissures.

Seeing water fall, it’s time to see it rise.  we head to Geyser, the geothermal “park” about an hour away. These days, Geyser itself rarely guises, its former glory taken over by Strokker just a few dozen yards away.  Strokker has been reliably guising every 5 minutes or so for a decade, but like a box of chocolate, you never know what you’re gonna get.  Some eruptions aren’t much more that a tub fart, while others can go 60 feet high.  We get the entire range in the half hour we spend there, plus take a look at the bubbling hot springs that dot the landscape.

Next stop is Gullfoss, one of the most picturesque waterfalls in Iceland.  Well, actually two of them, which makes it so fun to see.  The upper fall is broad and curved, the water crashing 33’ into the top of the lower fall.  The lower fall is about twice as high and dumps into a deep fissure that becomes the ensuing river.  The roar and force are palpable, and the constant mist spray makes this a literally immersive experience.  The waterflow can fill an Olympic swimming pool every second, and Mandy assumes that instead of counting “one Mississippi, two Mississippi” the local kids time hide-and-seek with “BAM-one-olympic-swimming-pool, BAM-two-olympic-swimming-pools”.  Ask her to do it for you next time you see her.

A 20 minute Kia ride down the road is Faxi, a smaller, wider waterfall.  Even though we’re getting hungry, it’s so easily accessible that we can’t resist.  We pull in, are the only people there and park about 10 yards from the water.  It’s the most peaceful place we’ve been in Iceland, just us, the falls and wild purple nootka (Alaskan Lupine) flowers.  It’s relaxing, so we watch and listen and be for a while.  Dipping my hand into the waters, it only takes a split-second to remember what they call this country.

2pm and close to hangry, we get to Fridheimar, our lunch stop.  We’ve been looking forward to this since we started planning in 2019, and had been envious of our friends who got here before us.  Fridheimar is a farm of 9 big greenhouses that harvests about 2000 pounds of tomatoes every day, about 40% of Iceland’s total.  But we’re here for lunch, because they’ve taken about half the space of the front greenhouse and turned it into one most innovative farm-to-table experiences we have experienced.  Only open noon to 4pm, tables book up quickly, even with tourism still not recovered from the pandemic.  While we wait for our table, we walk out front to play with the horses (did I mention they breed Icelandic horses, too?).  We have seen plenty of these horses in out travels and notice they all have a 70s-Farah-Faucet/80s-Senior-Prom Mullet kinda mane.  It’s endearing and we take to one horse that we instantly name Bon Jovi.  Back in the greenhouse we sit at the bar and order drinks, me the freshest Bloody ever made and Mandy the Happy Mary, a yummy cocktail of green tomatoes, lime, ginger, honey and vodka.  Seated at or table, we both get the signature entrée, the tomato soup buffet.  Served with rustic bread, sour cream and some other accoutrements, and revel in this simple, expertly prepared meal.

Next stop, Kerid Crater, the 3000-year-old volcano turned lake.  I’m not enthused about this one until I see it, then I’m in.  We walk the top perimeter and I realize the magnitude of the thing.  Then we walk down into the crater to the waters edge.  Having just seen a live volcano, we appreciate the opportunity to get a new perspective of the thing.  Our last stop for the day is Seljalandsfoss, the tallest waterfall we’ll see, and the only one we are able to walk behind.  The cloudy skys clear and we’re treated to a double rainbow in the mist.  What we realize is this isn’t a single waterfall, but what we nicknamed Waterfall Valley, two sides of sheer cliff that goes on for miles in both directions.  Driving through the valley, we see dozens of tall waterfalls, 200 to 300 feet tall.  We lose count but assume there are 2 or three every mile.

We check into the Umi Hotel a swank, modern number on the south coast.  It reminds me of the hotel from the James Bond film Skyfall, stark black concrete exterior with luxe finishes and a well-dressed professional staff.  It’s at once in stark contrast to the brutal environment and perfectly at home in the beautiful landscape.  Dinner is up the road at Café Anna, a family establishment created in the farmstead’s former livestock stable.  The wine is Italian and we order both specials.  Mandy gets the fresh caught cod, and I get the wild duck, which our server tells us is only on the menu because “they had a good day hunting today”.  As she serves the meals, she warns me to “watch out, there may still be pellets.”  This instantly becomes my new bar for ordering fresh game. 

ICELAND DAY 2 – FIRE AND WATER (AND HAIL)

 

(readers note: I changed the format so the pictures follow the relevant paragraphs.  Be sure to read all the way to the end.  Click on any picture to see all the pictures in full size)

After our marathon first day, we wake to the single best continental buffet we have ever had.  The local smoked salmon is finished with dill, the freshly baked rustic bread is lightly seeded, the Icelandic yogurts are beautifully topped with a variety of fruits and nuts, the coffee is strong and rich and served in big chrome carafes.  

We need a hardy breakfast for the long hike we have planned.  If you follow the news or you’ve seen the 60 Minutes piece, you already know about the recent eruption of the Fagradalsfjall volcano, and today we’ve hired a private guide to take hiking to see this natural phenomenon.  Together, Mandy and I have been in a 6.1 earthquake, driven 114 MPH from Glacier to Yellowstone, seen the tulips in bloom in Amsterdam, and swam alone in the Blue Grotto, but even for us this is an exciting bucket-list kinda day. 

We meet Thalis, our guide, around 10am in Grindavik and ride in his big 4WD Mercedes van to the start of the hike.  He is a wealth of information, not just about todays hike, but about the entire country.  It’s the best reason we’ve found to hook up with a local guide early in any adventure trip.  It’s a moderate 45-minute hike with a 1000 ft elevation to the top of the mountain with the best vantage point of the eruption.  It’s cloudy, 50 and windy as we start up the trail.  15 minutes in, on one of the steeper inclines, it starts to rain.  The rain turns into RAIN, big cold drops stinging our exposed faces.  Then the noise against our hoods changes and the trail turns white as we’re pelted by hail for a solid 5 minutes.  Oh, Iceland summer, what a bee-atch.

We reach the edge of the first lava field.  It looks like a 10 foot tall wall of warm black crystal and makes a constant sound of crushing glass.  This lava is about two weeks old.  The crust is cool enough to touch, but in the open gaps under, the molten rock still glows bright red.  Thalis explains that this lava is actually hundreds of feet thick and is steadily filling what was a deep valley just a few weeks ago.  We are taken aback by the sheer scale of the transformation.  The volcano is spewing about 10 cubic meters of lava every second, that is, spitting molten rock the size of a cement truck every second and has been since March 8^th.  If you can imagine dropping a cement mixer into a valley every single second for 83 days, you can imagine how full it would get.  And volcanologists (yes, that’s a real field you can make money at) believe this eruption will go on for years.  It will profoundly change the landscape for miles around, creating new mountains in it’s wake. 

We push the last 15 minutes up the steepest part of the trail to the main event.  The rain on the hot lava has caused a massive steam cloud, swirling like the ocean in the unpredictable air currents.  Just as we think today may be a bust, the skys clear, the steam dissipates, and the bright red molten lava stream reveals itself.  It’s pouring out of the top of the crater like a pitcher overflowing under the kitchen faucet, finding the lowest point in the spout to escape.  Today, the lava drops about 100 feet, splashes up 30 feet then drops another 100 feet until it’s out of site.  It’s a magnificent site, demonstrating the raw power of the earth.  We can’t take enough pictures, shoot enough video, or bond with enough fellow trekkers.  There’s about 150 other people up here with us and it’s better being a shared experience with travelers from around the globe.  Time to go, we are we hike back to the van discussing our experience like reliving a championship win play-by-play.

Back at our hotel, we’re in need of a pick-me-up.  Fortunately, our hotel is adjacent to Sandholt, the best bakery and café in the country.  Somehow the thick cappuccino is conducive to a nice nap, and we sleep soundly for a few hours.  Happy and rested we head out to dinner.  Destination Hlemmur Matholl, Reykjavik’s original foodies food hall.  Hip and casual, it’s all about the food here, fine-dining with none of the pretense of fine-dining.  Specifically, we’re headed to Skal!, a farm-to-table with amazing reviews.  They absolutely live up to their press, starting us with beautifully crafted cocktails at their 24 seat bar/restaurant.  We’re seated in front of the chef and watch him carefully create dish after dish expertly preparing and plating each.  Our Artic Char is the freshest we have ever eaten and their twist on in-front-of-you-made gnocchi starts with local rye flour.  We’ve eaten light and bounce up the street for our final course at Old Iceland, one of the town’s classic eateries in a cozy ground floor space.  The dish to get here is the shellfish soup, their well-honed version of the Icelandic classic.  It’s the perfect last bite.  It’s almost 10pm, but this is the land of the midnight sun, so it looks like mid-day outside.  Needing to walk off a few calories, we wander the dozen blocks to Hallgrimskirkja, the massive 250’ high monolith of a church that dominates the city’s skyline.  It’s stunning in its unique architectural style and pure scale.  Running out of steam, we hoof it to the hotel and add this day to the record books.

 

ICELAND DAY 1 – PICKING UP WHERE WE LEFT OFF

(readers note: I changed the format, so the pictures follow the relevant paragraphs.  Be sure to read all the way to the end.  Click on any picture to see all the pictures in full size)

It has been way too long since we’ve had a trip to blog about.  766 days to be exact, and our travel muscles seem to have atrophied.  Packing, which had become such a simple task, is quite the challenge.  It doesn’t help that we’re going to Iceland in June with expected highs in the 50s and we’re looping the entire island country in a couple of weeks.  My usual stack of nice shirts has been traded for rugged, waterproof gear, suede loafers for Columbia hikers.

This is the rescheduled adventure from 2020.  Fully vaccinated and with the pandemic on the decline, travel is back, but with new twists that we start learning well before the trip even begins.  Our first stop is in Reykjavik, one of the worlds hottest travel destinations.  Pre-rona that is.  A month before the trip, Icelandair moves our flight from Newark to JFK.  Curious.  A week before we leave, I get an e-mail that the hotel we booked is Reykjavik simply closed.  Sorry. We panic book another property, but I’m struck that there is availability at such a nice place this late in the game.  A few days later, that hotel sends a “sorry, closed” email too, but bumps us to an even nicer sister property.  Curiouser and curiouser.

We take a long Uber to JFK.  It’s the cheapest option when you consider parking and schedule it early.  Good thing too, as the torrential downpour grinds traffic to a halt.  It’s not stressful because we left plenty of time.  It’s completely stressful anyway cause it’s just taking so long.  At the airport we find the next curveball.  Iceland is requiring a vaccination “precertification”.  Easy enough to do from their website from the phone, but we can’t imagine why the airline didn’t have us do this days ago from home.  Once done, we sail through check-in and security with no lines.  No lines on a Tuesday afternoon in a New York airport.  Inside, the terminal is a ghost town.  Most of the newly renovated restaurants in Terminal 7 are shuttered, so we sit at the only open bar.  We can see half a dozen gates from our stools and can only count a few dozen people.  Turning to the woman seated next to us, I ask if she is going to Iceland.  Turns out everyone in the terminal is and we break into easy conversation in this uneasy situation.  Even with the empty terminal, we’re shocked with how empty the plane is.  On the tarmac, the skys clear and we’re treated to a double rainbow.  Maybe this trip is actually going to happen.  Once in the air, most people take a whole row to themselves, lift the arm rests and lay on their makeshift couch.

Above the weather now, we take a moment to reflect on the shear improbability of us being here now.  Mandy loves traveling but still dislikes flying but takes some comfort in the beautiful sunset out the port window.  It’s 10pm.  The sun is still setting, barely cresting the horizon an hour later.  We flip through the onboard screen to find the progress map and realize that the flight plan tracks almost perfectly along the sunlight/darkness sine wave.  We’re treated to a four-hour sunset and get some amazing pictures.

Landing, passport control, covid testing and car rental all go smoothly.  It’s 7:30am, we’ve been awake for 21 hours and need breakfast.  Good thing Mandy has a plan (she’s good like that) because we’re not up for too much thinking.  Max’s at the Northern Lights Inn provides us much needed nutrition, great coffee and even better views.  Well caffeinated, we drive a half mile to the famed Blue Lagoon.  We made 9am reservations back in January, but due to limited tourism, they now open at 10.  We call and a few apologies later they send someone to open early for us.  When you read on-line reviews, the Lagoon loses some points for being overcrowded.  We have the exact opposite experience, the entire place to ourselves and the staff doting on us, and we get that rarest of all Iceland pix, a serene, empty Blue Lagoon.  The lagoon is a series of interconnected thermal pools and water features that shimmer with an iridescent milk blue color.  Just the site of it is instantly calming.  Our host takes us to start in the massage area, where our masseuses are waiting.  We get onto thin blue float mats and are covered with warm, wet, heavy towels, including our eyes.  I understand quickly that this is not just an in-water massage, but an exercise in letting go, a thirty minute trust-fall, with an experienced guide rolling you this way and that as she rubs the sore and tired out of your muscles.  When done, they park Mandy and I next to each other when we just be for a while.  Once we finally move, we head towards the mask bar, where we slather our faces with thick white silica mud that goes on like whipped cream cheese and stays there for 15 minutes.  It’s quite the site, dozens of us in the same Kabuki paint.  Relaxed, refreshed and showered we head down the road.

We’re taking the back roads to Reykjavik with a few stops planned.  It’s tough going as the fog is thick and dense, limiting visibility to a few meters.  First stop is Graenavtn, the Green Lake just a few yards off the road.  It’s a bust - even though we’re right next to it, we can barely see it and hop back into the car.  It clears a bit by the time we get to the Seltun geothermal feature.  Still foggy, but the deep gray bubbling earth and multi colored rocks make this quick 20 minute hike feel oddly like exploring a underwater reef.  The last planned stop is Kleifarvatn (CLAY-vahr-VAHT) lake.  The black sand beach is enticing, but Apple maps takes us unexpectantly down “unnamed” (un-PAVE-ed) road.  Readers of this blog know that it is undisputable proof of why you should never, ever, buy what used to be a rental car, but on most trips were many days in before we subject our car to such bumpy, rock throwing, bottom scraping abuse.  But here we are and suddenly I do feel like we picked up just where we left off.  Mandy is white-knuckling it and not holding back on the colorful language as we bounce, swerve and splash our way down the well-used path.  The payoff comes about a mile and a half down the trail as the sky clears a bit and we reach the “beach”, a thick, sugary lava sand in a deep shade of black that boarders the large body of water.  Now that we can see it, the landscape is straight sci-fi, with only thick moss covering the loose lava rocks.

We check into the Sand Hotel in Reykjavik, a lovely boutique in the hip city centre.  Our room is on the top floor with views of the shopping district and the super-yachts in the harbor beyond.  It’s 2ish and we change and decide to explore the city a bit.  We explore the shops and the murals and end up at Salka Valka, a locals joint out with good local beer and great food.  The city is fun, but our adventure only lasts for a couple hours  as we’re going on 29 hours awake.  We nap for a few hours then get up to try to set our body clocks to local time.  We wander out the front door, window shop for a dozen blocks and end up at Forsetinn, an unassuming bar with comfy couches unintentionally decorated like your grandmother’s rumpus room.  Floki, the locally distilled spirits, make the perfect nightcap to our 35 hour day.