Why Hello, Iceland

What a delightfully bizarre Island.

Our IcelandAir jet landed Southwest of Reykjavik, in a brown, rocky, mossy, terrain, without a skyline or tree in sight. Many of our travel resources have spoken of ¨lunar landscapes¨in references to areas such as Mt. Kilimanjaro or Cappadocia, Turkey - but this one takes the ¨lunar¨ cake.

It was a dreary day and we had a 45-minute commute to our guesthouse in Reykjavik, so we were sorta bummed. To add to the bummer-osity, we didn´t have our checked luggage (it arrived 24 hours later), the storefronts were mostly closed up since it was Sunday, and the food was outlandishly expensive. After an hour of searching, we settled for the cheapest sustenance - a $30.00 pizza that probably wouldn´t pass muster at a nudie bar.

Yes, this island is expensive. Not just the food, either - hardback books on sale for $60.00, a sushi platter for only $120.00. Sure, most big cities such as Tokyo, New York, and Paris have wallet-draining districts, but they also have cheap local markets and bargain baskets - no so in Iceland.

When we turned in that night, we realized that we had reached the safest country in our itinerary (and possibly, in the world), but we were most afraid of being stranded here, due to the inescapable inflation of food and goods over the United States. And so we slept...

Zzzzzz. Zzzzzzz.
Hey, give me back those blankets!
Zzzzzz. Zzzzzz. Zzzzz....

We awoke to a bright blue sky and a great buffet breakfast, we rented a car (a white Toyota hatchback we named ¨Fran¨for no apparent reason) and we were on the road East of Reykjavik by 10:00AM. And there was nothing ¨Bummer¨ about Iceland anymore.

We spent the day in the ¨Golden Circle¨ region, seeing mostly geological sights. We began at Thingvellir, the site of outdoor Icelandic Parliamentary assemblies from 930AD to 1700AD. When the region was first settled by the Norwegians, the representatives of each village assembled at the site and a speaker stood on law rock (near the pictured church) to recite the region´s laws to the rest of the assembly. The government was minuscule and law was based on trust between the populous and the chieftains. We know libertarians who would shed a sentimental tear.

We continued to Geysir, where we walked along naturally colored pools of geothermally heated water and saw the largest active geyser in Iceland - Strokkur. We watched it for about thirty minutes and saw a handful of massive eruptions from only feet away.

Gulfoss, the Golden Waterfall, was breathtaking, especially because the sun caught the spray of the water and created a bright rainbow - so bright, at times, that it sometimes interrupted our view of the falls. We ate lunch overlooking the falls, and were pretty damp from the spray by the time we stood up.

We wrapped up the day with a drive to Hengill and a two-hour hike up the rocky, mossy, peaks. At the apex of our climb, we laid down in the sun atop the moss - it was perfectly dry, but had the cushiony quality of a lamb´s coat. But the time we pried ourselves from the hillside, we had to drive back to Reykjavik.

After a day on the Icelandic countryside, we certainly wouldn´t mind being stranded here... for a little bit.






Another day in Iceland up next!