SPRING BREAK 2010: Grand Tour
Day 1 (26 March): Iceland, Day 1
Blue Lagoon, Northern Lights
I said goodbye to another grey London day (imagine that) and got above it all to find lots of gorgeous, fluffy cotton-ball clouds. I’ve never seen whiter, and it made me realize that even though I might get the grey clouds a lot of the time here in London, seeing them from literally a different perspective makes them wonderful again. Eventually, over the North Atlantic, the clouds broke to reveal water that was so smooth it floored me. Only, oh wait, it was frozen. (I have Googled the heck out of this for fact-checking and I feel confident in my observation, and maybe it’s not so incredible to anyone else to seem, well, incredible, but seriously the ocean was FROZEN over!)
Lava fields. Scandanavian houses. Blue water. Mountains. Iceland has it ALL.
I was picked up from the airport and taken to Blue Lagoon (or, Bláa lónið), a geothermal spa in the midst of a huge lava field on the Reykjanes Peninsula. I spent a good half hour just wandering the field outside of the actual lagoon, breathing in the fresh Icelandic air and just oscillating between utter disbelief and tear-inducing appreciation that I had actually made it. I was in Iceland.
The color is so insane because of all the minerals, and it’s these minerals that give the water its healing power: rumor has it a woman with a severe case of psoriasis came and visited the Blue Lagoon, where years and years of ineffective medical treatments were shown up by the nature’s own prescription, and the rest is history.
UNREAL. In the background is Svartsengi, the geothermal power plant that feeds the Blue Lagoon pool itself (we’re getting there, hold your horses). Waters and turbines and stuff I don’t understand, but long story short Iceland is so green. I mean, it’s blue here I guess but it’s “green” – understandable, if the Earth around you was this beautiful you wouldn’t want to lay a finger on it and risk doing it any harm.
I finally went in, paid my ISK and hopped into my swimsuit and jetted through the chilly air and into the pool. The silica mud coating the bottom took a second to get used to, but quickly became a relaxing sensation in between my toes. I walked all over the pool, relishing the warm spots and scooting along whenever they got too warm and coating my face in the silica mud and letting it dry. I found a quiet corner and floated with nothing but my kneecaps above the milky-blue waters and listened to the earth churning and growing under the surface. I rotated my body and placed my toes back into the mud one by one and experimented with what it felt like, where my body stopped and the Earth began; the first of many meditations, I introduced myself to this new corner of the world and embraced it and let it take over me. I was in Iceland.
As the day drew slowly to a close, I left the Blue Lagoon at the final call, hopping onto a huge empty bus to take me the rest of the way to Reykjavík. The only one on the huge bus, I got all of the driver's attention and left with suggestions and tidbits (and quite a bit of knowledge about car engines, somehow too).
I dallied around Reykjavík for a bit, grabbing a pylsa (hot dog) at a little café (ironically named Texas; oh dear, I have come so far to go nowhere at all) and never escaping the breathtaking views of strong mountains or the equally intimidating Icelandic language. Now, I have two words in my repertoire: “takk” – “thank you”, always gotta show the gratitude ya know! – and “Eyjafjallajökull” – the volcano we all know and love, from a 20-minute session of sounding it out one syllable at a time in public (I made a lot of friends doing that, trust me), so I can be pretentious when people talk about it. But that is now, a month later: at the time, I could do nothing but set every word (or a rough pronunciation) to the tune of Sigur Rós' Sæglópur. Make it work.
Lava fields. Scandanavian houses. Blue water. Mountains. Iceland has it ALL.
I was picked up from the airport and taken to Blue Lagoon (or, Bláa lónið), a geothermal spa in the midst of a huge lava field on the Reykjanes Peninsula. I spent a good half hour just wandering the field outside of the actual lagoon, breathing in the fresh Icelandic air and just oscillating between utter disbelief and tear-inducing appreciation that I had actually made it. I was in Iceland.
The color is so insane because of all the minerals, and it’s these minerals that give the water its healing power: rumor has it a woman with a severe case of psoriasis came and visited the Blue Lagoon, where years and years of ineffective medical treatments were shown up by the nature’s own prescription, and the rest is history.
UNREAL. In the background is Svartsengi, the geothermal power plant that feeds the Blue Lagoon pool itself (we’re getting there, hold your horses). Waters and turbines and stuff I don’t understand, but long story short Iceland is so green. I mean, it’s blue here I guess but it’s “green” – understandable, if the Earth around you was this beautiful you wouldn’t want to lay a finger on it and risk doing it any harm.
I finally went in, paid my ISK and hopped into my swimsuit and jetted through the chilly air and into the pool. The silica mud coating the bottom took a second to get used to, but quickly became a relaxing sensation in between my toes. I walked all over the pool, relishing the warm spots and scooting along whenever they got too warm and coating my face in the silica mud and letting it dry. I found a quiet corner and floated with nothing but my kneecaps above the milky-blue waters and listened to the earth churning and growing under the surface. I rotated my body and placed my toes back into the mud one by one and experimented with what it felt like, where my body stopped and the Earth began; the first of many meditations, I introduced myself to this new corner of the world and embraced it and let it take over me. I was in Iceland.
As the day drew slowly to a close, I left the Blue Lagoon at the final call, hopping onto a huge empty bus to take me the rest of the way to Reykjavík. The only one on the huge bus, I got all of the driver's attention and left with suggestions and tidbits (and quite a bit of knowledge about car engines, somehow too).
I dallied around Reykjavík for a bit, grabbing a pylsa (hot dog) at a little café (ironically named Texas; oh dear, I have come so far to go nowhere at all) and never escaping the breathtaking views of strong mountains or the equally intimidating Icelandic language. Now, I have two words in my repertoire: “takk” – “thank you”, always gotta show the gratitude ya know! – and “Eyjafjallajökull” – the volcano we all know and love, from a 20-minute session of sounding it out one syllable at a time in public (I made a lot of friends doing that, trust me), so I can be pretentious when people talk about it. But that is now, a month later: at the time, I could do nothing but set every word (or a rough pronunciation) to the tune of Sigur Rós' Sæglópur. Make it work.
(A beautiful but tragic video, watch it if you've got the time to spend!)
With little else to do with my 18-year-old solo self on a Friday night in a city with bumpin’ nightlife and a drinking age of 20, I figured, what better to do than hop on yet another tour bus and hunt down some aurora borealis. As late March is the tail-end of the typical season for auroral activity, I hadn’t really made any plans to see it, but upon arriving at the airport I overheard whispers that the necessary cool air and clear skies were both in attendance, so it was worth a shot. We were driven out to Þingvellir National Park right outside of Reykjavík, to escape the city’s light; along the way, our fantastic tour guide Helgi offered to find us a stop for an “unobstructed view of the erupting volcano, so you can go home and say you did see it… if that is important.” I have so many wonderful lines he tossed out with spot-on delivery; maybe I was just exhausted but he cracked me up.
With little else to do with my 18-year-old solo self on a Friday night in a city with bumpin’ nightlife and a drinking age of 20, I figured, what better to do than hop on yet another tour bus and hunt down some aurora borealis. As late March is the tail-end of the typical season for auroral activity, I hadn’t really made any plans to see it, but upon arriving at the airport I overheard whispers that the necessary cool air and clear skies were both in attendance, so it was worth a shot. We were driven out to Þingvellir National Park right outside of Reykjavík, to escape the city’s light; along the way, our fantastic tour guide Helgi offered to find us a stop for an “unobstructed view of the erupting volcano, so you can go home and say you did see it… if that is important.” I have so many wonderful lines he tossed out with spot-on delivery; maybe I was just exhausted but he cracked me up.
The arctic desert of southern Iceland is very cold at 11pm. Cold and dark and desolate and captivating, but first and foremost very cold. Me and the majority of my fellow travelers were posted up inside the bus enjoying the relative warmth when after 20 minutes of short stints of outdoor finger-crossing and squinting, Helgi came on to first admonish us that “tonight was a night to be cold” (friendly Icelander English for “stop being pussies”) and then to tell us that he detected auroral activity on very high-calibre settings on his very high-calibre camera (not surprising given that he was, obviously, a very high-calibre man). So we scooted our cold tourist tushies out and here is what greeted us:
Just kidding. That is a car driving down the road through Þingvellir. Really, this is what greeted us (following pictures © Helgi Guðmonsson):
There couldn’t have been a more perfect ending to my first day in the most beautiful place on Earth. Iceland wasted no time in giving me all it had, between peaceful moments of simple existence and incessant demonstrations of an Earth that is so alive.
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