Photos: Lyle Such
Writing: Thu Buu
Camera: Canon 5d MkIII
Lake Myvatn is rather unique. It is a shallow lake created by a volcanic eruption thousands of years ago. This explains the many mounds of circular dirt that look like mini volcanoes scattered throughout the lake. An aerial view shows that each mound even has its own crater. These formations are called rootless cones or pseudocraters. The craters were not conduits for magma flows but rather as vents for gases to escape. It would have been neat to fly over this area. We just didn’t have enough time.
A herd of goats greeted us when we stopped by the lake. One kid even walked right in between Lyle’s legs and tried to eat his pants. The goats were really friendly and came straight towards us. Maybe they are used to people feeding them. Once they realized Lyle had nothing in his hands for them, they ignored us and turned back to munching on leaves.
Dimmuborgir is a lava park with towering lava pillars, bridges, caves and really weird-looking rock formations. In the winter, snow hangs thick and eerily on these formations giving it a ghostly, sinister appearance. A perfect location for Game of Thrones’ “beyond the Wall” scenes.
I’m standing at the entrance to Grandfather’s cave from the movie “Noah”. It really isn’t a cave at all. Past the entrance is a patch of grass enclosed within a circular wall of rock. There is no roof. It’s open to the skies above. It’s quite a big difference from Grandfather’s cave. That’s movie magic for you.
Talking about Grandfather, the whole time we were here, we were either trying to get away from tour groups of really slow European senior citizens or really loud and oblivious Chinese.
Icelandic horses sport 80’s rock-star hairdos! They walk with just as much confidence and coolness. They’re so cool they even have their own trotting style. As they move, their heads remain lifted and still unlike the nodding heads of horses from elsewhere.
Iceland has very strict laws about animals. Importing horses into the country is prohibited. Once a horse has left the country, it will not be permitted back in.
Horsemeat is common in Iceland. Our tour guide says he prefers it to beef. We saw a horsemeat entrée on the menu at our hotel’s restaurant, but for $80 a plate, it was too expensive for something neither of us really enjoy…meat.
The earth rumbled and broke apart. Geothermal water began collecting inside the cave in the fissure. In the past, this was a popular hot springs bath, but in 1984 after a series of earthquakes, the water temperature began to increase. It is now too hot for bathing. However, its crystal-clear turquoise water still brings visitors to this site. It’s allure still inspires movie sets to recreate its likeness.
Our last few days in Iceland were spent along the lonely South coast. A couple hours from Reykjavik, traffic on the road dwindled down to almost nothing. We would drive for long stretches at a time without seeing another vehicle. The quiet beauty around us was all ours to enjoy.
Reynisfjara Beach is a gorgeous black pebble beach on which sits a large cliff. The exposed side of the cliff showcases basalt columns stacked together like a large chaotic staircase. On either side of the cliff are caves. The uneven roofs of the caves are the actual underside of individual basalt columns.
Jokulsarlon Lagoon came into being about 60 years ago when the Breiðamerkurjökull glacier receded from the Atlantic Ocean leaving behind a lake filled with luminous icebergs. Huge chunks of ice continue to break off the glacier regularly and fall into the lagoon. The Jokulsarlon Lagoon continues to expand as the glaciers feeding into it continue to recede each year. It is now the deepest lake in Iceland even though it is not very wide.
Icebergs are of all different configurations and sizes. Some are solid, transparent blue blocks of ice all the way through. Others are opaque and comprised of smaller pieces of ice held together.
The lagoon was a symphony of natural sounds. Thrills and chirps filled the air as birds glided from one iceberg to another. Plunck! An arctic tern just broke the surface of the glossy water, diving into the icy lake in pursuit of its next meal. Craaaackkk!!! Kerplunk! A chunk of ice just snapped off from a larger iceberg and was momentarily fully submerged. Pop! It buoyed itself back above the water, bobbing up and down floating with the current
It’s a heart shape glacier. Iceland loves us!
Making the most of our limited time in Iceland, we reserved our last excursion on our last full day there. With crampons secured and an icepick in hand, we tackled the Fjallsjokull Glacier for a glacial walk and ice climb.
The short trek to the glacier from the parking was educational. The dirt covering the glacier is ash from the 2011 eruption of one of the volcanoes on the island. Even though it seemed like we were walking on dirt, the tour guides cautioned that we were actually standing on the glacier. Because the glacier is constantly melting and the path of the river flowing from the glacial melt is unpredictable and always changing, our tour guides have had to change the route they take to get onto the mouth of the glacier three times since the season began a few weeks before. Due to its enormous size, it’s easy to think that a glacier is a fixed object, when in fact it is in constant motion.
Walking on top of the glacier, I felt the glacier’s presence like an entity in itself. It’s not a frozen lifeless mass of ice. In fact Fjallsjokull’s unique climate is perfectly suited for the growth of glacial mice, moss that grow around rocks found on the glacier. When these fuzzy rocks slide on the glacier, they look like adorable little rodents. And that is the origin of their nickname, glacial mouse. If they turn enough over time, moss grows on all sides. If they become covered completely in moss, they are called adult mice.
Before we tried ice climbing, we thought that it would require a lot of upper body and arm strength. It doesn’t. With the right footing and positioning of the body, the bulk of the work is supported by your legs. We had a total of four climbs. Two beginning tries were on ice walls of about 30 ft. tall. The bluer the ice, the harder it was to stick the icepick into. Thank goodness for the belay. Many times, our foot holding slipped, and we would have fallen to our death otherwise. My favorite climb was at the second wall where we had to walk perpendicular backwards down about 60 ft. From there, we had to climb back up to the top. This wall was a lot harder to stick our icepicks into.
The silver icepicks issued to us by the outfitter was purely for picture taking. We used better, lighter icepicks on each climb.
The glacier creaks and moans. Grooves with running water pour into a glacial hole or moulin, slowly drilling away at the ice, making the hole bigger by the minute. A moulin starts out rather ordinarily, with a rock. As the sun heats up the rock, the rock in turn melts the ice around its perimeter, making a moat around itself. However, the ice right under the rock is still frozen solid. With each passing day, the moat gets bigger and the water begins to rotate in a circle around the rock until eventually the rock is spinning itself. The spinning motion of the rock acts like a drill, digging into the ice and in time creating a large and deep hole; a whole big enough for adventure seekers like us to climb down into.
Just when the tour guides were removing the ropes from the final climb, the rain started. Once again, our luck with the weather held out when we needed it to.
With crampons wrapped on our shoes, we had to consciously pay attention to the way we walked so that the spikes won’t catch our pants and make us trip. Our guides told us to walk like cowboys, (not gangsters—that’s Lyle’s addendum). There were a couple of times when the crampons did get a hold of my pant leg and almost caused a spill.
Our transportation to and from the glacier was in an old, yellow school bus. Neither of us had ridden one in who knows how long, and it immediately brought back memories of field trips and days going back and forth to school when we were young. The bus was slow and noisy, and the ride was bumpy. The seats were cramped and the windows steamed up. However, it somehow seemed fitting for the landscape and the people that we were with. Just another strange surprise during our time spent in Iceland.
Sticking to tradition, we sampled many different categories of lodging in Iceland, from luxury hotels in the middle of the town plaza to a little log cabin that looked more like a shed in a remote countryside area. We stayed in newly constructed hotels built around a central theme and in hotels whose histories lined the walls and were their badge of pride. The building that Hotel Horn now occupies used to be an elementary school, and before that, it was a business complex that included a dentist’s office.
Hotels in Iceland have some cool quirks. The elevator shafts are very different than what we are used to. The door to the elevator is connected to the building, not the elevator, so between floors, we were staring at the wall of the building. Some hotels had three walls connected to the elevator platform, and some only had two. And then there was the hotel where the elevator was just a platform. We had to manually shift a lever for the platform to move. The rest of the four sides were the actual walls of the building.
One final note about visiting Iceland. So many times you hear people say that Iceland is green and Greenland is covered in ice. It’s a neat little thought, but I’ve always felt it was a vast overstatement made by people who are only repeating what they’ve heard without knowing if it’s true or not. Well, it turns out to be 100% true, as our pilot pointed out as he flew us over Greenland to prove the point. It was an amazing sight, a vast land of mountains covered in snow, with enormous chunks of ice breaking off and scattering in every direction into the sea. Now, if I hear someone make this comment, I just sit back, smile, and hope one day they see it for themself.
