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By Noosha

Fun language fact! Did you know there's an Icelandic word in the English language? Geysir (or as we spell it, geyser). It's a name given to an erupting spring in Iceland and is derived from the Icelandic verb "to gush". You're welcome. :)

Old Geysir in Iceland is no longer gushing, but its neighbor Strokkur never failed to entertain. We stood by it for about 30 minutes and saw it explode 5 or 6 times. Totally awesome watching the build up in anticipation of the next eruption.

Wait for it...

It's ready...

By Noosha

This day was full of squeals (mainly by me) because we saw puffins!!

We took a 3 hour ferry ride from Dalvik to the little fishing island of Grimsey located off of the northern coast. Grimsey's claim to fame is that it's bisected by the Arctic Aircle, and we wanted to cross that invisible line on the day of the Summer Solstice.

We were surprised by the number of people heading to a village that boasts a dozen houses at most. In an effort to beat the crowd, we decided to power-walk our way to the circle. Well, instead of beating the crowd to the Arctic Circle post, we completely missed it. A good thing though, because the latter part of the trail led us to large colonies of puffins nesting in the cliff side. No one else was around to enjoy it except the two of us.

Puffins have eluded us most of this trip. They don't like to stick around when humans show up. Rightfully so, as they are hunted for their meat in Iceland.

It's a joy to sit on the grass and watch these ridiculous and adorable birds. Even watching them fly or more realistically flutter is entertaining.

Puffins aren't the only birds nesting in the area. Arctic Terns would swoop down and terrorize us with their squawking. You feel concern for your hair, but if you move along quickly from their nesting areas, you won't be on the receiving end of a peck.


Like much of Iceland, Grimsey was a serene and beautiful place. There are two bed and breakfast places here for those interested in being on the island with fewer tourist. As for us, 3 hours seemed adequate. We headed back to the mainland by the evening ferry.

Detifoss

Detifoss is the largest waterfall in Europe by volume of water discharged.  The foss is fed by melt from the Vatnajökull glacier, which is the largest glacier in Europe.  Detifoss is in a remote, desolate part of northeast Iceland.  One must take a 45 km (28 miles) dirt gravel out to the falls.  Luckily the speed limit on these gravel roads is 80 kph (50 mph), only 10 kmh less than the paved roads. 

Noosha under a double rainbow
(We loved the freedom of being able to walk up to the waterfall and cliffside)

 

Hverarond Mud Pits

The Hverarond mud pits are probably one of the worst smelling sights one should ever visit.  The pungent odor of sulfur hits you the moment you step outside the vehicle, and proceeds to get worse the closer you get.  However inspite of the smell the location of the pits and the pits themselves are spectacular. 

 

Lake Mývatn

The Lake Mývatn area is the garden location of Iceland.  Located in the north of Iceland the lake is situated in an active volcanic region and is know for lush vegetation and abundent wildlife including fish, birds (especially duck), and insects.  The name of the lake is Midge Lake named for the resident irritant in abundance, the Midge fly. 

We toured two areas around the lake.  The first is an area known for numerous pseudocraters.  These craters were formed by lava covering pools of water.  The water was heated to such a temperature they exploded creating craters from the lava.  The pseudocraters are now covered in grass and are quite striking.

The second area we visited was a small penninsula that was gated and had several small walking trails.  The penninsula was forested and had many beautiful views of the lake and its wildlife.  We were there on such a beautiful day the lake was amazing.

Brian finally got a good photograph of the lichen in Iceland

Here are a few random shots I thought were pretty.  They are from our driving tour along the eastern part of Iceland.

These are pictures from one of the farms.  This was the closet thing to still functioning farm with 150 head of sheep.

One of the many falls on our trip.

Huge U-shaped glacial valley.  This picture was taken from a picnic pull out on the Ring Road just before heading into a 3 mile tunnel through the other side of this valley.

We didn't take too many photos of the famous Icelandic horse.  They are a beautiful species.  See WiKi link for more information on this interesting bread of horses.

We missed the birth of this horse by minutes.  We saw it takes its first steps.  This photo was taken from the road on our way to get gas in the morning.  This field is in between two gas stations and a major intersection.  It was pretty crazy to see something so "wild" right in the middle of this town.

The picture below was taken from a high pass on the Ring Road.  We went over several passes like this one.  The road on some of the passes was gravel and there was generally nothing around on the passes.

By Brian (and sometimes Noosha)

In Iceland jökulls (pronounced yo-kull) aren't the strange folks you see living in small town, they are glaciers - like Vatnajökull, the largest glacier in Europe.  We saw many portions of several jökulls along the southern portion of the Icelandic coast and again across the interior. 

I was fortunate enough to walk a very short distance onto a section of a glacier after dinner on our first night.  I went out by myself about 9:00 PM.  It being summertime in Iceland, there was plenty of day light.  I didn't get any photos of myself and the only photo I took didn't really turn out all that well.  The ice at the foot of a glacier is almost black from all the debris.  The water running off the glacier was extremely cold.  It took several minutes for my hand to warm after less than 30 seconds in the water.  The water is laden with sediment and thus is cloudy.  One can see less than a half inch below the surface. 

We were able to get close to the foot of one section of the Vatanajökull in the Skaftafell National Park.  Here is a picture of Noosha standing on a section of ice at the toe of the glacier. 

As you can see it looks like she is standing on dirt but under the dirt and rocks is solid ice.  There were plenty of large boulders caught up in the slow moving ice formation.

 

Jökulsárlón (Iceberg Lagoon)

One of the more beautiful things we saw on the trip was the Jökulsárlón or iceberg lagoon at Vatnajökull.  The lagoon is full of icebergs from the Vatnajökull glacier.  Some even drift out to sea through a narrow river outlet.  The lagoon was so peaceful.  We enjoyed a relaxing few minutes resting by the lagoons edge and skipping rocks in the still water.  Noosha made some rock art, adding to the collection of existing structures.

Noosha's rock art

Yep that's me in shorts on the edge of an iceberg lagoon with a glacier in the background. 

It was warm I promise!

The strangest thing unfolded as we were leaving.  We saw a bus full of Indians (people from India) walking over the rise leading to the lagoon.  At first we thought it was just a tour group but then we noticed camera and sound equipment being hauled up and over the rise.  It turned out they were filming an Indian movie at the lagoon.  Here we are Americans traveling in a more remote part of Iceland seeing an Indian movie about to be filmed.  This is truly a small planet we live on!

Part of the Indian film crew carting the camera over the rise to the iceberg lagoon

By Brian

Southern Iceland was a beautiful mix of lush green rolling terrain, views of the Atlantic Ocean, waterfalls (or foss in Icelandic), and glaciers (more on those in another post).  We departed Reykjavik heading east on our counter-clockwise tour via Route 1 which is known as the Ring Road.  There was plenty of time to visit waterfalls and enjoy the views on the first day as we only needed to drive 150 KM. 

A few of the waterfalls we saw along the way.

One of the nice things about visiting sights in Iceland is you can walk right up to the thing you are viewing.  Rarely are there ropes or barriers preventing you from jumping right into the waterfall is you so desired.  Paths allow one to get within inches of cliffs to get up close and person photographs. 

They drive these really big off road vehicles with huge balloon tires in Iceland.  All over we saw these huge vehicles.

Here is our little SUV next to the Viking SUVs.

Our "farmhouse" guest house for the first night of the tour ended up being one of our nicest (now finally writing this post on our last night of the tour we can look back and make this judgment).  The place looked as if it had very recently opened.  From the outside it was rather non-descript and down a gravel road in a rural area many miles from any developed town.  Inside everything was modern and new.  The views out our windows was beautiful (windows which opened in two directions, 1) tilting from the bottom with a 3"-4" opening, or 2) swinging all the way open on side hinges). 

Fancy Euro shower

Dining area

Weather in Grimsey was great and the seas were almost flat on the way there and back.  Which was good because we were below deck for the entire 3 hour ride back as all the top side seats inside were taken by the time we got on board.  We crossed over the Arctic Circle and saw tons of puffins.  Noosha was very happy with the latter.  This morning after checking out we visited a local milk and ice creme producer.  He was the first person in Iceland to get a permit to produce is own ice cream for sale in the country since 1947.  Only one other person in the country has a similar permit. 

We have about an hour drive from Akureyri to our next town so we are spending most of the day here.  Unfortunately wireless internet access in stores that claim to have access is proving difficult to connect to.  If things improve we will stay a bit longer, if not we will move on.  The weather has finally changed after only one day of rain and only a few of clouds.  Today is light rain and clouds, not good for photography.  We are taking this chance to have more of a down day and less driving.  Tomorrow we drive across the highland interior and stay in Gullfoss.  There we will do most of the Golden Circle activities and before returning to Reykjavik. 

Hello all, we haven´t had internet service at any of the farmhouses and don´t expect to be back online until we return to Reykjavik on June 25.

We have stayed at two guesthouses in two beautiful areas! The scenery in the countryside is amazing!

We´ll see you when we´re back in the city.

Ciao! 

By Noosha

We're off on an 8 day countryside farmhouse self-drive tour. We're not sure what internet connectivity will be like at each farmhouse, but we'll be in touch time and internet permitting.

Our itinerary *click*. The only difference is that we're staying one extra day in Akureyri so that we can go over to Grimsey island and cross over the arctic circle. Yeah!

 By Brian

Vestmannaeyjar Islands are off the southwest coast of Iceland.  We visited the largest and only inhabited island - Heimaey.  The island is famous for the 1973 volcano which erupted just outside of town, covering nearly 1/3 of the village in lava, expanding the island's landmass by nearly 1/3, and almost cutting off one of Iceland's largest harbors.

We took a 30 minute flight from Reykjavik's small domestic airport.  Upon arrival we had no idea exactly how we were going to get from the airport to the harbor to schedule the boat tour we wanted to take.  We asked what appeard to be a tour guide if there are taxis we could take.  She said yes but if we wanted she could take us in her tour bus.  Got to love Icelandic hospitality!

Cool street signs in Heimaey

The boat tour took us around the entire island of Heimaey, stopping in a few sea caves. We even had a saxiphone playing sea captain. 

View looking back at the Heimaey Harbor

Boat captain playing in an acoustic cave

After the boat tour we had lunch and took a taxi in our search of Puffins.  The rather expensive taxi ride took us from one end of the island to the other - maybe 3km and $20.  We found a little shelter set up for Puffin viewing but only saw a few Puffins rather far away.  Being smallish birds we really didn't get any good photos this time.  On the steep grassy cliffs where the Puffins live, in ground nests, were a small flock of sheep grazzing. 

 

After Puffin viewing we walked around the lava flows from the volcanos and wrapped up our trip with a stroll through the Iceland Independance Day (or National Day) festival.  Iceland gained its independance from Denmark on June 17, 1944.

 We have seen this plant blooming all over Iceland

 The sign behind Noosha signifies the former location of a home covered by lava

 

 Abstract polar bear (we think) statue in a park where the Independence Day festivities were held.

 

 We claim this playground Viking ship in the name of Iceland!

 

The best Icelandic beer Brian has tasted.