Northern Exposure

For us, Akureyri and our experience of the North was a time of luck. Waking up on our second day in the seaside city, the rain had completely let up. You cannot imagine how happy we were for the sun, finally. I know, I act as though we were gone for ages, but even just a couple of days of cold rain and exposure to the harsh elements could make one day feel like one week. Again, it's amazing how some sunlight brings the entire landscape to color and life; it moves from depressingly dramatic to just plain beautiful. It's also amazing how it numbs those tinges of agitation that may arise from the constant moving and the constant chill.

View of Akuryeri from across the harbor.



Side street close to city center.



Akureyrarkirkja church sits at the top of the hill and is the focus of the area, just as in Reykjavik. It is the work of the same architect, Guojon Samuelsson. Unfortunately, Reykjavavik's Hallgrimskirja was covered by scaffolding the entire time we were there, so I was unable to witness its sublime effect. Below is an image that I found, courtesy of Trey Radcliffe. I just happened to stumble upon his site, Stuck In Customs, (he has another at www.treyradcliffe.com) and what a treat! Kind of puts anything I took to shame....but here is Hallgrimskirja below, sitting in Liefr Eiriksson's wake, in all its glory:

On this particular day, we decided to pay for a guided tour to the Lake Myvatn area. Turns out with our bus passport we got a pretty decent discount. I must say, this excursion was the highlight of our trip. We were skeptical of guided tours as the first one we took, visiting Pingvellir, Geysir, and the waterfall Gullfoss, included a disgruntled, death-obsessed American tour guide, with a sick fascination for a female drowning pool. Think Phil Hartman's Alcatraz tour guide character from So I Married an Axe Murderer. Having the need to extensively discuss the effects of natural disasters, he took us past the site where a family of sheep were killed by boulders in a recent earthquake. There were 50 casualties. Long, dramatic pause. None of them human. (Colin does a wonderful, raspy impression of this.)

But much to our delight, our tour guide for the Myvatn trip was a laid back Icelander with a shy but constant smile, who did not have the need to point out every casualty, whether human, ruminant mammal, arthropod, etc, from every natural disaster. I remember him best from the conclusion of our trip, when driving back into the center of Akuryeri we saw crowds of people gathered by the water and cars pulled over to the side of the road. Two whales had ventured into the harbor! (I was exceptionally pleased since due to over-extended funds, we had reluctantly decided to rule out Husavik, the prime spot for whale-watching.) "Ahhh, is beautiful," he sighed into the microphone upon seeing the whales emerge. The group did not leave the bus without giving him a very generous applause for a day that will never be forgotten. As a side note, I was delighted to see the two whales on the nightly news as I curled up, satisfied and exhausted in the quaint common room of that night's guesthouse.

Below is a pic that Colin managed to take in the bus. You can see the hump of one of the whales.

I realize that I have been neglecting my New York trekking and need to get back to life here eventually. So instead of boring you with verbose descriptions of landscape (I can go on, for pages and ages, trust me), let me just show the highlights of this trip via our pics. At least I will try to do that. Note that some of these may have already been posted.

We travelled from the northwest to the northeast through Myvatn to Kafla mountain. En route, we stopped at the waterfall Godafoss, which literally means the waterfall of the gods. The effect of this waterfall was in stark contrast to Gullfoss, in the southwest. Again, I believe the weather played a considerable role in the sentiment. Here is Gullfoss, from our first tour:

Yeah, we have matching red jackets. So what.

My thoughts on Gullfoss, from the trip:

The endless fall of a short-lived nightmare,

Exploding to a sprawling bloom,

Of ghosts fired into frenzied flight.

Now, compare this to Godafoss:

It was far too nice out to be poetic. The sky was somewhat clear. No ghosts present.

Here is some scenery from Lake Myvatn. It's unbelievable, and obviously differs greatly from the gloom of our bus ride up.

And, one of the highlights of this trip for me and my obsession with geothermal areas, was Viti crater, the footprint of a violent 1875 eruption. The water inside is naturally heated. Unfortunately, I was unable to swim here, despite my compulsive urge to leave the group and dive right in, the Icelandic way.

Of course, en route to Viti, we passed yet another power plant, driving up Krafla mountain.

At the sight of Dimmuborgir (apparently meaning dark fortress or city in old Norse), east of Myvatn, we not only viewed fields laden with natural lava sculptures, but got to stand over a slight rift between the tectonic plates of North America and Europe, technically putting us in two continents at the same time. (That is a loaded statement. If only it were that easy...)




At Haverarond, the smell of sulfur took on a whole new, steaming character. It was a little too concentrated, even for my newly acquired taste. I noticed Colin walking around with his jacket over his face. The ground here bubbled with light gray mud, oddly the same color of the basement walls of my elementary school. I had a hard time believing this was purely nature. It looked like someone had just dumped paint or clay into a large boiling vat. The scenery here was very Twilight Zone-esque. Again, simultaneously otherworldly and ultra worldly.

Very hard to grasp this is real.

Unsure as to why I am posing like a Power Ranger.

Colin, escaping the deadly sulfur.

The tour concluded with a stop at the Myvatn Nature Baths, what the Northerners deem their answer to the infamous Blue Lagoon. I definitely appreciated the simplicity in comparison to its more themed and uber touristy southern counterpart. But the surreal effect of the Blue Lagoon, in my humble opinion, is unrivaled, tourist trap or not. With that said, I guess next post I owe you some pics, and at least a brief account.