Waterfalls and Lava Fields: our first 48 hours in Iceland [journal]
If the Mars Rover footage had you dreaming
of visiting foreign planets, then you need to get yourself to Iceland. We’d hired a car for our first few days in
Iceland so that we could explore the dramatic waterfalls and black beaches of
the South, but weren’t wholly prepared for the strange scenery we were about to
experience.
Getting to Iceland was something else
entirely. We woke up – I was still sick
– and lugged our things to the airport.
As luck would have it, the shuttle bus didn’t start running until the
next day, so we were walked the 40 minutes to the airport with our packs, in
the hot sun. So we arrive and we’re
sweaty and I’m still sneezing like crazy and my eyes are watery and I’ve got
those shakes you get when you get the ‘flu so we don’t look particularly fine
and upstanding. To top it off, we’d
forgotten to pack the wetbag in our checked baggage, so my hairdressing
scissors and far too many liquids were in our carry-on.
We handed them over to security. I was subjected to a frisking, with a
stranger’s hands on my clammy back (I wanted to apologise so badly). My body was doing that weird feverish thing
where I needed three jumpers one minute and to be naked in an ice bath the
next, so I was switching out layers like a mad person. This had security especially concerned and
they all watched me like hawks while Nicholas beeped several times going
through the scanner.
After being held up, we were running late
for the plane. We literally ran there,
were met at the gate, asked where on earth we’d been seeing as we were cleared
at security 15 minutes ago (“We ran here straight from security!”) and boarded
the plane. We were seated separately.
The plane took off quickly, and my body
temperature was still all over the place.
I was sweating profusely and so hot I was about to throw up, when
Nicholas came to check on me. I had no
cash on me, but the friendly stewardess on WOW Air gave me a free bottle of
water – probably glad I wasn’t vomiting everywhere.
I’m usually a good flyer. I get a bit antsy on long flights, but don’t
mind them. This flight was the
exception, and I was thrilled when we finally landed at Keflavik.
We hopped in our hire car and set out down
south.
A while ago, I’d heard news that a fellow
RMIT Art School alumni had been sent on a ‘self guided cycling residency’
through Iceland. While I’d never spoken to
her during our time there, I knew her artwork, and there’s only so many
familiar faces so far from home, so we drove to the N1 where she was drinking
her weight in coffee and got chatting.
We finished up later than anticipated, and made a late-night dash for Seljalandsfoss - the first major waterfall you find as you snake your way around the ring road. Braving the cold and the wet, we ventured outdoors and made the short journey behind the waterfall (getting almost completely drenched in the process).
The sky was still lit with the hazy blue of dusk (or perhaps dawn?) so we crawled into the little Suzuki Jeep-esque thing we had rented, pulled out our sleeping bags, and slept in the car.
The next majestic waterfall on our journey was Selfoss (if you haven't managed to deduce, 'foss' means 'waterfall'), and we only just managed to beat the tour buses here! We arrived just after 9am, made the short trek up the staircase to the top and saw them arriving by the half dozen on our descent. A warning to anyone who finds themselves visiting Iceland in the summer: make use of the sunlight in the early morning.
While the waterfalls you find en route to Vik are famed throughout the lands, I have to say it was the next lot of scenery that really captured my attention. Sprawling black rocky deserts, fields of hardy bluebell-like flowers (to prevent sandstorms from destroying the roads), and great mossy lava fields, the remnant of disastrous eruptions in the 1700's.
The sky was a pale grey and it made the landscape look more desolate than it would've otherwise (though, apparently, the fields are much more vibrantly green after rain). Very few cars stopped to observe the strange shapes and forms in the rocky bubbles that went on, endlessly, in the landscape.
We continued driving, stopping briefly to stare and marvel at the texture, before the landscape returned to the strange, otherworldly black desert. Sections of the Iceland's glaciers peered at us over mountains, and we stopped to see the remnants of bridges destroyed by a volcanic eruption from under the glacier. The pockmarked scenery was evidence of the powerful natural forces that governed Iceland, forcing the people to constantly adapt.
Passing Skaftafell (and vowing to come back and make the pilgrimage to Skogafoss on our return trip) we made our way to the glacial lagoon just before midnight, to see the small icebergs that drift through the water there.
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