OK, so this is gonna be slightly confusing but here we go. I am writing this post the day after I did all this stuff and the day after I did all this stuff I did most of this stuff again for reasons that will be explained at the end of this post. So I am gonna brush over most of the stuff in this post so that I can talk about it tomorrow (which is actually today) when I got better photos but I am gonna write it as though I wrote it yesterday. I have no doubt that that made absolutely no sense. I also apologise for any mistakes as I can't be bothered proofing and I want to go eat some dinner tonight (which is actually tomorrow night).
So I was picked up at 8:30am and we headed out to Thingvellir (actually spelt with a crazy letter that looks like a P but the round part of the P is in the middle of the line, look it up) National park where there is heaps of shit going on. First stop was where the North American Tectonic Plate meets the European plate.
In the place was the drowning pool which, exactly as it sounds, was used to drown people. Woman to be precise. The men just had their heads chopped off:
On we went to Gullfoss falls which means "Golden Falls".
Further into the park we went to check out Geysir and the surrounding thermal area. Smells just like Rotorua:
There was a massive Geyser at the site called Geysir which is apparently one of the only words we use in English that was derived from an Icelandic word. The language is actually kinda crazy (but we already knew that). It is actually an ancient Norsk language that was spoken in Scandinavia but their language changed due to external influences but because Iceland was such a small community and so isolated they have retained more of the old language. It is also really similar to Ye Olde English as well, our guide said it is actually pretty easy to read stuff in Olde English. Languages are wacky.
There is still an active geyser at the site though as it was "cleaned" (I'm not positive what that means but it seems man has been meddling). It fires water up to 40m into the air. I learnt how to use my rapid fire mode on my camera to capture the following couple of photos, one at the start of the eruption and one towards the end:
On the way home we stopped at a pretty cool wee church. I have seen a lot and from the outside this didn't look too different but inside I really liked the mosaic Jesus instead of the normal old statue or whatever. It was quite a new church and is about the 10th or so that has been built on the site. All of the old ones only lasted a few years and then blew away or burned down.
Behind the church was this building that is a replica of the churches they used to have in iceland. Sweet cladding!
On the way home we stopped at an old crater site that was pretty sweet:
When I got home I made the (difficult) decision to go on a superjeep / snowmobile trip the next day. Reasoning was as follows, Pros: I am sick of museums so I think it would be better to get out and about in the Iceland country side instead of wandering around Reykjavik (inevitably ending up at a museum), I really want to have a ride in a super jeep, snow mobile sounds mint, I don't know if I am ever gonna be back to Iceland so I might as well go the whole hog. Cons: The trip costs 40900 ISK, half of it is exactly the same as the tour I did today but in a super jeep instead of a van.
I have always figured that you often inclined regret the things you don't do and very seldom regret the things you do do. So I hope in 30 years time when I read this I am not thinking "God damn that $400 would be handy right now!". So I went about booking the tour. It got a bit tricky as the company I had been recommended to go on was not running the tour on Sunday so I did some more research and found a company that I could go with. So that was sorted.
Then I got a call to my room to see if I wanted to go on a Northern Lights tour. Apparently the lights were pegged to be pretty sweet with very strong electro magnetic activity and skies supposed to be clearing. We went and stood in the dark and the cold (I think it probably dropped below 0 while we were there) for about 3 hours and it was totally worth it. There was a couple of really good shows during the time (they come and go a lot) where we saw all sorts of dancing colours in the sky including green, red and orange. The whole sky was aglow at one stage, it was incredible and extremely hard to describe. I think I was extremely lucking as you don't often get colours other than green in the lights. We had "arches" (3 at one stage), "spikes" and all sort of other crazy shit. It was one of the most surreal things I have ever seen and if I didn't know that there was some solid science behind it I might start believing that UFO's were behind it or, heaven forbid, god! Abso-bloody-lutely Amazing. I will hopefully get some pics off a guy that had an SLR with a tripod. Damn not having a tripod!
Also: Had an epic small world moment. I was standing in the dark in the middle of nowhere waiting for the Northern Lights with about 200 other people scattered around. Then this kiwi guy asks me where I'm from and this is roughly how the conversation went down:
"where you from?"
"Blenheim, you?"
"Christchurch"
"Oh yeah, I went to uni in Christchurch"
"What did you do?"
"Electrical Engineering"
"What year?, my brother did that"
"Finished in 2007, what was his name?"
"Adrian Gin"
Wacky shit.
I crawled into bed at about 2am and knew that when I woke up in the morning the lights would be one of those experiences that you are not really sure happened or not.
No comments:
Post a Comment