ICELAND

There is so much to write about Iceland that I will probably have a couple of goes.The church abov e is one of the most beautiful buildings I have ever seen.The windows are all plain glass and from standing at the back of the church looking towards the altar, the view through the windows behind the altar are stupendous taking in the snow covered mountains which backdrop Reykjavik.We stayed in a guest house Sunna which was great and the family who run it could not have been more hospitable making bookings for us in Icelandic- a language which is absolutely foreign!
The Viking ship picture above is a replica of one which was discovered buried for hundreds of years, and a crew of Icelanders actually sailed it to USA a few years back taking 103 days for the voyage.As it is an open boat one can only admire their courage.

The flight across took nearly 3 hours and we arrived at 10.50 at night and b oarded the commuter bus only to find that the airport was 50 kms from the city.The driver had little or no English and did not understand Guesthouse Sunna -but Carol was confident she would find it.We did indeed after some trying moments and an eventual taxi ride to find the lady at Sunna patiently waiting up for us at 1 am!!

Good fortuune was with us as the weather during our entire visit was perfect even though a little cold.Sun and blue skies are a blessing for tourists. The town of Reykjavik has 130,000 residents and canvasses an area equivalent to that of Rome- so there is plenty of space around and we both felt totally comfortable wandering around the city visiting two of the museums to get a handle on the culture and history. It is an expensive place however, a reasonable meal costs $40 or more. We booked a full day tour for day2 which cost aboout $90 (no meals included).

The tour was in two parts.In the morning we went to the Reykjanes peninsula and were the only people in the bus.This peninsula is made entirely of lava which gives a moon like appearance of the landscape.We stopped at the division between the Continent of North America and Europe where the tectonic plates had separated.The division was some 30 metres and we saw another such division later that day where the separation was much much more pronounced. The sign in the photo above displays the site of the rift. We saw vast jets of steam coming out of the ground just to remind us that this whole area is a mass of hot lava below the ground. The fishing village of Grindavik was remote facing out to the Atlantic Ocean where there are extensive fishing grounds. Back to Reykjavik to join our afternoon tour this time with several other people including 7 Australians!!

We saw the beautiful waterfalls at Gullfoss partly frozen and accompanied by a strong bitterly cold wind which inhibited long time viewing! Had a bite of lunch and a beer and then on to the spouting hot springs of Geyser and Strokkur. You could see the pressure of the hot water building up in the spouthole, and then it would suddenly shoot up 30 or 40 metres into the air.It paid to stand on the lee side!