 | |  |
| Welcome to the new Icetips.NET site! |
|
| News & Bio | Archives | All Icetips Products | SQL Templates | About Icetips.net |
|
The trip to Iceland Part I San Antonio to Reykjavík 16-June-2002 -- Arnór Baldvinsson Our trip to Iceland started at 9am Tuesday morning, May 28, 2002. We took a taxi to the San Antonio airport and boarded a Continental flight to Houston. Continental had managed to mess up our seating arrangements so that Sue didn't have any reserved seat, but did have a ticket! In Houston we had just about half an hour to rush to the next Continental Airlines flight which took us to the Baltimore/Washington airport. There we had a few hour layover until we boarded the Icelandair plane. This part of the trip was mostly rushing from one part of an airport to the other and trying to keep Laila happy, which is a considerable job by itself! 
The flight from Baltimore to Keflavík takes around five and a half hour and was completely uneventful. We landed in Keflavík at around 6:35am on Wednesday morning, around 1:35am our time and at that time we were pretty darn tired. Sue did manage to get some sleep on the plane, but I did not really sleep for more than a few minutes at the time. At Keflavík we had to go through passport control as Keflavík is now one of the entry ports into the European Schengen. 
We had a rental car waiting for us at the airport. Rental cars in Iceland are expensive compared to the US, mainly due to differences in insurance (insurance is always with the vehicle, never the driver) and also because of VAT. We got our car, a Nissan Almera, for about US$46 a day with 200km/day (125miles/day) included. The car was comfortable for us although it would never run any power races;) 
We had not reserved a hotel room and we had not anticipated being as exhausted when we would arrive as we turned out to be. So after we drove to Reykjavik, we had the tough job of finding a place to stay. So we started driving around Reykjavik trying to find a hotel. 
To cut a long story short, about two hours later we found a really nice guesthouse, by accident, almost in the center of Reykjavik that was fairly cheap, at $85/day and more importantly they had a room available right away. So we parked the car and ourselves for a few hours to get some rest after being on the road for almost 24 hours! We spent Wednesday in Reykjavik, mostly just resting. In the afternoon we went for a visit to my aunt Fríða Á. Sigurðardóttir, who is a well known and respected author in Iceland and the rest of the Nordic countries. 
That evening we went for a walk in down town Reykjavik and dined at a small seafood restaurant in Lækjargata. They have a fish buffet for $19 and it is worth every cent! There is a lot of restaurants in this part of Reykjavik, both cheap and expensive and most of them are excellent. You have a great variety in cuisine, anything from Icelandic fish to Mexican, Chinese, Thai, Danish, German, British, Argentinean, Vietnamese... |
Reykjavik to Vík í Mýrdal 16-June-2002 -- Arnór Baldvinsson Thursday morning we briefly visit my brother Hafþór who lives in Reykjavík. He was my best man at our wedding, so he got special treatment by Laila! 
Then it was time to start our 700km, 435 miles, journey to the East coast, to Reyðarfjörður. As you can see on the picture above, the weather had been quite nice and the two days we spent in Reykjavik the temperature was around 18C/65F and it was fairly calm and clear. About 10 miles out of Reykjavík it started raining and it would rain the whole trip to the East coast - not constantly or heavily but always a little bit here and there as if to remind us that we were in Iceland, not Texas! 
This picture is taken from the top of the Kambar mountain road about 20 miles East of Reykjavik. The rest of the trip through the South part of Iceland is mostly on complete flatlands. This is the heart of agriculture in Iceland with dairy farms, sheep farms and mixed farms all over. 
On fairly clear days, you can easily see the peaks of the Vestmannaeyjar Islands off the South coast of Iceland. The Vestmannaeyjar Islands were the scene of dramatic events that took place in 1973 when the volcano on the island, which had not erupted since Ice age all of a sudden started erupting. The population of 5,000 was quickly moved to the mainland and remarkably nobody died or was injured. The volcano erupted for several months and at one time the lava flow was a serious threat to the harbor, which is one of very few on the South part of Iceland. An Icelandic engineer suggested using heavy duty pumps to pump seawater on the lava to cool it. This had never been done before, but after weeks of pumping ice cold seawater on the lava, it slowed to a halt. 
This is Seljalandsfoss, which is one of Iceland's most famous waterfalls, because it is possible to walk behind it - I'd recommend appropriate clothing as 100 yards from the waterfall the mist is more like heavy rain than mist! 
This picture of all of us was taken by an Italian tourist that we met there and after Sue had taken a picture for him, he took a picture of us. As we drove East, most mountains were covered in clouds, so our plans to take pictures of the mountains kind of fell apart. We did get a few shots of the Eyjafjallajökull glacier peeking through the clouds, but not a good one. 
|
Vík to Kirkjubæjarklaustur 16-June-2002 -- Arnór Baldvinsson Vík í Mýrdal is a small village on the South most point of Iceland. It is directly beneath the Katla volcano in the Eyjafjallajökull glacier. 
This volcano is dormant, but has erupted every 75 years on average through documented history. It's several years overdue now and people in this small village live in constant fear of eruption. The reason is that Katla is in the middle of the glacier and when it erupts, the glacier melts and the location of the volcano and the steep path makes these floods the most powerful waterflow on the planet with upto twice the average flow of the Amazon. 
East of Vík the road continues into what is sometimes referred to as one of the biggest deserts in Europe. Miles and miles of sand, carried out by the big floods from the glaciers and the rivers that follow. It is light enough to blow when it's dry and there are fierce sand storms in this area every year. Do NOT under any circumstances enter this area if there is a sandstorm blowing. Vehicles have been seriously damaged in sandstorms and the sand and gravel can easily break windows and then you are unprotected for the sharp sand. 
When the sand ends, a lava takes over and the landscape goes from black deserted sand to gray mossy lava. This lava is from the eruptions in Lagagígar in the late 18 century. This is the biggest lava flow in historic times (i.e. after the ice ages) on Earth. The eruptions lasted for years and left a quarter of the Icelandic population dead and half the life stock. The lava is several yards thick and very rough. This is definitely not the place to go for a walk unless you want to risk broken bones. 
At the end of this huge lava is the small village of Kirkjubæjarklaustur. We spent the night there in an Icelandair hotel. Very nice hotel, but expect to pay around $100 for the night. 
Kirkjubæjarklaustur is one of those very pleasantly beautiful places that you find tucked away, yet right in front of you. Everywhere you look you can see the art of life, colors and a planet in formation. Every place has a story. Kirkjubæjarklaustur has it's own story of the "Fire priest" who during the big eruptions, when the lava threatened the village and the church, went to the church and prayed and preached and pleaded with God to stop the lava before it destroyed His house. The lava stopped less than 100 yards from the church. 
Another story tells of two sisters in the local monastery who broke their wows and where executed by drowning in a lake above the village called Systravatn (Sisters lake). |
 |
||||||||
 
| ©2003 by Icetips Software & Consulting |
