First Impressions

Wow, that was a long trip. 3 hr drive to Boston, 2 hr wait at the airport followed by a 5 hour flight. Then a  2 hour wait for an airport transfer, an hour to sort out the van rental and about another 3 hours driving in Iceland (with stops at some pretty spectacular waterfalls - Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss) to get to where we’re staying tonight (Vik).

Seljalandfoss

Skogafoss

First impressions. Iceland is barren. Barren and cold. Barren cold and windy. It wasn’t so bad during the day, mid sixties and mostly sunny, but it’s 6:30 as I write this and we’re on the coast. The temperature has dropped 25 degrees and the wind is howling. I mean shaking our van howling. I have a hard time imagining how people can live here when the best month on the calendar has this to offer.

Having said that, it is pretty spectacular. There are no trees except the ones that have been planted in the recent past, mostly in the towns or near farms, so the views are stark and expansive. We spent about an hour driving though an area with a massive glacier on our left and the Arctic Ocean on our right. Everything is volcanic too, so the rock formations are jagged and strange. We spent a half hour driving through a steaming lava fields that absolutely reeked of sulfur. It is like another world here, and we’re not even to the good parts yet.

Barren landscape - the white cloud is smoke from an active volcano

The language is… interesting. Lots of sounds I don’t usually make, lots of words that are longer than they have a right to be and here’s what Wikipedia says about their alphabet “The Icelandic alphabet is a Latin-script alphabet including some letters duplicated with acute accents; in addition, it includes the letter eth (Ðð), transliterated as d, and the runic letter thorn (Þþ), transliterated as th(see picture); Ææ and Öö are considered letters in their own right and not a ligature or diacritical version of their respective letters.” Huh? Try these words out: Eyjafjallajokull, Þingvellir, Kirkjubæjarklaustur, Jokulsargljufur, Egilsstadir, and Fjaorargljufur. Rolls off the tongue right? There was a video on the flight over that tried to give a sense the language for visitors, it was corny, but it gives you an idea 

The camper van is pretty cool. They’ve thought of everything: beds, storage space, a heater for the cold nights, stove fridge and hot and cold running water, navigation and 24 hour support. The best of all for me is that it has seating for three up front so Madeleine can be with us while we drive from place to place (although the novelty of a bedroom/kitchen/dining room in the back of the van has her wanting to spend most of her time back there).The only problem I can see after one day is trying to keep Madeleine and Colleen from having their stuff explode all over the back of the van…

Campervan

Tomorrow is a big day. First Icelandic horseride on a black sand beach, then a drive across a lava field so we can hike through a glacial cave, then back to Vik for a lava show (man made lava, what could go wrong)

Michael
27 July
Vik campground 
Iceland