Reykjavik, Iceland

How should you react when your tour guide casually mentions that the glacier that you are about to walk on actually covers a volcano that is overdue for an eruption? Panic? Should we phone home? What were our chances of survival if an eruption did occur? Answer - zilch. The volcano, Katla is best known in popular literature as the inspiration for Jules Verne's story 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth'. It also has an impressive eruption history of about every 80 years. The last major eruption occurred in 1918, so it is now overdue. A great fact to find out when you are just about to climb it.

Arrival in Iceland
The main objectives of this trip were to see the Northern Lights and also the natural geological features of this island country. Olie had downloaded a new app that allowed him to use GPS to track the destinations we visited and plot them onto a map.

The route we travelled in Iceland -
yellow bits are towns, white bits are glaciers 

We arrived in Iceland fairly late on a Thursday night via a flight with Icelandair. As it was the middle of winter, the city was quiet and seemed from far the 'party town' reputation that we had been told of by friends. After a quick stopover at the central bus station, we were shuttled to our budget hostel and pretty much feel asleep shortly after.

Exploring Reykjavik
We started the day off with a filling buffet breakfast of traditional Scandinavian foods like pickled herring and dark bread. Venturing out of the hotel, we caught a glimpse of the amazing scenery of snow capped mountain ranges bordering the Reykjavik harbour - our adventures in Iceland were about to begin!

Golden Circle
Instead of venturing out and about on our own accord, we (including two friends, Romy and Roopa) booked ourselves into a well known tour route that started at midday and took in all the key sightseeing destinations, known as the 'Golden Circle'. This consisted of the Geysir region (including the famous Geysir that brought the term geyser into the English language), the Gullfoss ('golden falls') waterfall and the Pingvellir UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We were fairly lucky with the weather conditions - heavy snow had blocked visibility the day before, but we had blue sky for the beginning of our tour. However, we soon found out that Iceland's weather patterns can be very unpredictable - we will never complain about Melbourne's changing weather again!

Iceland has varied weather patterns with the sun making an occasional appearance

Geysir
Iceland is a country that relies on sustainable energy sources, particularly geo-thermal hot water. The water is pumped out of bore holes and piped around the island. The water usually contains a little bit of sulfur, and the smell of 'eggs' during a shower isn't uncommon. However, Iceland's water is not to be shunned based on this - the country has one of the best tasting tap waters in the world that come directly from glacier sources and there is no difference between the tap water in the bathroom and buying bottled water in the supermarket, with one of our guides even showing us the outdoor stream where water is bottled to prove a point that a lot of tourists were readily wasting money.

Geysers are spouting hot springs. The word geyser is derived from the Old Norse language 'to gush' and we definitely observed this occurring. The geyser Strokkur erupts every 4-8 minutes and we were lucky to capture the entire cycle on camera.

The reliable (4-8 minutes) Strokkur geyser

Capturing the Strokkur geyser in action

The force of the geyser almost blew Mei away

Gullfoss
Gullfoss waterfall was named by Lonely Planet as one of the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. The day we visited definitely showed its charm - foaming water over three tiers, ice covered cliff faces and a lookout point that was close enough for us to feel the power and noise of the falling water. Amazing.

Beautiful Gullfoss waterfall

The video below is from Gullfoss waterfall in Iceland

Pingvellir
This national park is famous for three reasons:
1) the enormous natural lake;
2) it was the site of the first Icelandic Parliament upon settlement in 930AD;
3) the Mid-Atlantic ridge, which rises from small openings in the ground, to a very large rift valley that is continually opening up - it means you can jump back and forth between the North American tectonic plate and the Eurasian tectonic plate by just crossing a bridge.

Olie is in North America; Mei is in Eurasia

The Mid-Atlantic ridge

The rift valley where the tectonic plates are pulling away from each other

The rift valley and the lake

On our way to and from the sites mentioned above, we were entertained by the lessons in geography from our tour guide. Icelanders take pride in their natural surroundings, with informative speeches about the origins of the island, the different types of volcanic ash and an obsession with teaching tourists how to say Eyjafjallajokull.

Northern Lights
Unfortunately for us, the Norther Lights did not perform for the excited audience. Even though the weather on Friday night cleared up at the perfect moment; the fuzzy green lights decided that they would disappoint about 15 coaches of tourists that had been lured in by Icelandair's mass promotions.

The tour started with a point of drama, with the ticket voucher provided to us by the airline showing the incorrect time. By coincidence, we had returned to the hotel to see a little noticeboard announcing a pick-up of 8:30pm, instead of the 9:30pm we had planned for. Luckily, the mini-bus driver was very understanding, and allowed the four of us (including friend's Romy and Roopa) to do a 5 minute shoe/bag/clothing change, before dropping us off at the main bus terminal.

Overall, day tours in Reykjavik are quite well organised, with most companies offering complementary hotel pick-up and drop off at a central location where a larger coach is waiting for the onward journey. On this second night in Iceland, we boarded the coach to a location near the main airport where the city lights were less distracting and proceeded to wait for the Northern Lights to appear.

We waited, waited and waited for the show. The waiting time was broken up by entertainment provided by Roopa and Romy, including renditions of Spice Girl 'classics' and Whitney Houston tribute songs. The waiting lasted about 40 minutes, standing in almost pitch darkness on a mound of soft hay staring up at the sky for any indication of movement. Signs were not looking good when our coach driver then told us at the next destination to not bother getting off the bus. We sat at the second location for probably another 20 minutes, dozing off to sleep midway. Unfortunately for us, there wasn't any activity that night and the re-booked tour the following night was cancelled due to poor weather conditions.

Searching for the Northern Lights

Disappointed, we arrived back in town close to 1am. We had heard from fellow travellers, that this is the time when Icelander's traditionally kick off the partying, however we were too tired to notice and disappeared off to bed fairly quickly.

Glacier 'Walk on Ice' Tour
Saturday's adventures started early with a hotel pick up to a 'Walk on Ice' tour, where we headed for the Solheimajokull glacier, in south-west Iceland. The glacier is part of the Myrdalsjokull ice cap, 590km sq in size that rests on the Katla volcano. Our guide entertained (or perhaps scared) us with pointing out all the scientific equipment attached to the bridges that would 'alert' authorities in Reykjavik if mass ice melting indicated that an eruption was occurring - but it would unlikely be able to save any hikers that were in the area at the time

In addition he also pointed out that should anything happen whilst we were wandering up the ice with our ice pick and crampons; we wouldn't have much hope to escape. An eruption of Katla would make the global impact of the neighbouring Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption (2010) look mild. In 1755 Katla's eruption led to melting ice of an almost biblical flood level of over 200,000 sq.metres per second - which is more than the combined average discharge of the Amazon, Mississippi, Nile and Yangtze rivers.

Extinct volcano caldera

Trying to relax and not think about any possible volcano eruptions

The trip to the glacier was on a coach propped up with massive wheels that could navigate over the volcanic rocks and take us directly to the glacier tongue. From there, our mountain guide instructed us on how to attach a harness, crampons and led the way as we trekked up the ice, taking lots of photos in ice caves and watching a nearby group do some ice-climbing.

Glaciers are extremely pretty during the winter months as the light absorbs into the ice to create a brilliant electric blue colour. However, winter also brings snow and therefore crevasses are not as easy to spot - we stuck to the 'trail' and the guide was always quick to mark out places where the snow innocently covered a very deep hole.

Trekking on the ice

Our tour group

One of the little ponds on top of the glacier

Watching the guide tie rope around a glacier tip

Jumping for joy

Trying some ice-climbing

The other tour of ice climbers

Like ocean waves

Volcanic sand, blue ice and snow creating a pretty contrast

Bright blue ice covered by snow

The deep crevasses on the glacier

Hanging out in the ice-cave

Not quite small enough to fit into the tunnel

Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss Waterfalls

We stayed on the glacier for about 3 hours, before we headed back home to Reykjavik, stopping off at  two large waterfalls -  Skógafoss and Seljalandsfoss on the way.

Star jumps at the waterfall

That night, after hearing that the Northern Lights replacement tour had been cancelled due to bad weather, we drowned our sorrows with some duty free purchases and then headed out for a bar on the main street. However, maybe we had started too early, and are getting too old and too tired - we were soon went back to the hotel room - for another night in.

Blue Lagoon

Our last day in Iceland was a relaxing one. We packed our luggage, jumped onto a bus and headed off to the Blue Lagoon. This is one of Iceland's best marketed attractions - actually the by-product of a geo-thermal power-plant next door. But the hot, clear blue water and 'therapeutic' properties of the silica mud made it possible to turn the site into a spa resort for travellers just arriving from / departing to the airport.

Blue sky and Blue lagoon

Packed with tourists

Pool side bar - drinking blue cocktails

The geo-thermal energy plant - source of the heated water

With the convenience of luggage storage facilities, arm bands that allow you to open lockers, buy food and drinks - it was all so convenient that we didn't want to leave. However, our time in Iceland was up too soon and we were quickly back on the plane home to London.

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