Saturday was our next-to-last day in Iceland and Maggie and I decided to take separate trips. She headed to the bus station to check out the shopping mall just outside the city while I signed up for another trip along Iceland's South coast to go hiking at the Sólheimajökull glacier. In an astounding turn of events, it was actually sunny outside! LOOK AT IT!
I passed by Eyjafjallajökull again this morning. This is a very common site on farms near the volcano - fields just coated in thick black ash all over the place.
Our various bus trips involved many hours passed staring out the windows at the beautiful Icelandic countryside while listening to facts about Iceland from our tour guides (Helgi on the Golden Circle tour, and Erlingur on the Þórsmörk trip). I'll try to simulate that experience for you by reciting facts I learned about the country while showing you pictures I took out the window on the tour.
Iceland generates 100% of its heat and electricity through the renewable means of hydroelectric and geothermal plants. Utility bills are very low for Icelanders, and in fact they have such an abundance of energy that they heat their streets from below to prevent ice and snow from sticking in the winter.
Many Icelandic gas stations also offer hydrogen pumps for hydrogen-powered vehicles and the hydrogen fuel is completely free of charge.
Every Icelandic citizen learns to speak both English and Danish in school starting at age six. They have a 100% literacy rate in the country. College education is optional and completely free for all citizens, and any Icelander who continues into secondary education learns at least 1-3 additional languages. Since there are only 300,000 people living in the country and their language is very difficult to learn, it is important for Icelanders to become fluent in other languages to communicate easily with the rest of the world.
Iceland's climate is very mild and fluctuates very little. It's usually only gets down into the 30's in the winter and up into the 50's in the summer. Despite the mild temperatures there is quite a lot of precipitation and the weather can change very suddenly, particularly between August and March (as was made abundantly clear during our stay).
The arctic fox is the only land mammal native to Iceland. Most of the native wildlife is made of up birds. There are no reptiles or amphibians and hardly any insects. A number of mammals have been imported to the country, such as the abundant sheep and horses, reindeer, and rabbits.
Hope you paid attention, there will be a quiz later. After a couple hours we arrived at Sólheimajökull. These were the stunning views from the parking area. It only got more mindboggling.
There were just four hikers in our group, plus our guide, Robert. We affixed our helmets and crampons, gripped our ice axes, and set off behind him onto the ash-covered ice.
Huh huh huh... icehole.
There are tons of these holes and chasms, called moulins, in the ice. Robert was not shy about going right up to the edges, hacking off ice chunks with his axe, and kicking them down the moulins so we could hear how long they would fall before finally hitting water at the bottom.
I asked him if all the ash on the glacier also came from the eruption of Eyjafjallajökull last spring, but he indicated that most of it in Sólheimajökull is actually left over from a large eruption in 1918!
Higher up we reached a small pool of water. Looking back where we came you can see the parking area way off in the distance.
This was an awesome horizontal ice hole we found, and Robert led us right down into it.
Leaning for support led to an absurdly cold ass.
So far, this had been the first day when the weather was consistently cooperative. It had been gorgeous all morning and the sun was starting to peek out over the mountains.
But then, in standard form for Iceland, the weather began changing rapidly and the sky turned gray.
Dark storm clouds overhead a minute later.
The rain was hard and freezing, but lasted only about 10 minutes and left a stunning sheen on the ice. I'm glad I wore two pairs of pants.
Some of the areas on the glacier were almost unbelievably blue. Robert told us that the ancient glacial ice can be 9 times more dense than normal ice due to the years of compression.
After wearing us out with a couple hours of hiking, he took us to a huge moulin so we could try our hand at some intensely frightening ice climbing. Here is Robert lowering me down into what appeared to be a bottomless pit.
And here I am working on my exhausting climb back up with two ice axes in hand and the spikes on my shoes. If you can't believe I did this, neither can I. It was ridiculous.
Almost out, completely spent. My triceps were outrageously sore then next day.
Another 10-minute rainstorm came, this time with strong winds (quite disconcerting near the ice pits), and after it passed we made our way up to the summit.
I was certain that heading back downhill to the lot would feel incredibly dangerous, but the crampons really did a great job and we had no issues. Just saw a lot more striking blue ice on the way.
After a well-deserved lunch in the van we headed to our second and final stop, which was the Skógafoss waterfall. These sheep live right next to it and have an awesome view all the time.
And here's Skógafoss. Pretty awesome, but nothing compared to Gullfoss from the other day!
I met back up with Maggie in the late afternoon to discover that she had found the mall to be pretty lame, and I wished we'd done the glacier hike together instead because it was unbelievable. We headed out for our final dinner in Reykjavík, which was more Thai food; this time at a place called Thai Reykjavík.