South Iceland

Monday, July 11, 2016  South Iceland

Iceland is fascinating.  A country the size of Kentucky with 330,000 inhabitants, it lies at the southern edge of the Arctic Circle but has a moderate climate because of Gulf Stream warming.  Icelanders love horses and there are more than 80,000 horses on the island, most used for riding but some used as meat animals.  More about that later.  The midsummer climate so far has been dreary, with temperatures in the high 50s/low 60s, wind and heavy clouds with occasional showers or drizzle.  This when the days are extremely long: today sunrise was at 3:30 AM and sunset at 11:33 PM.  It never gets dark, but is like twilight during the short night.  The blackout curtains in our current hotel, on the south coast of Iceland, are not close to perfect so the room is light all night long.  There is a heavy gnat presence when the wind dies down, on your face and in your nostrils and ears, but fortunately the wind is pretty brisk most of the time.

After breakfast this morning we traveled to the Eyjafjallajokull volcano.  Our guide laughed as we tried to pronounce it, telling stories of the visiting journalists who tried to broadcast the name when the volcano erupted in 2010 and wreaked havoc with air transportation all over the globe.  We boarded a huge “Super Jeep” (which actually is a Ford) with giant very soft tires and set off up the volcano slope. 

 Up and up and up we went, over streams, up boulder-strewn fields, and onto relatively soft snow fields towards the Myrdalsjokull Glacier.  At this latitude it takes little elevation to get into first sub-arctic and then arctic range. 

 Here’s our group on the snow field:

 The volcano erupted under the glacier and the damage was astonishing.  The evidence is all around and easy to see, especially with the aid of David Silverberg, our National Geographic geographer to point things out.  Life is hard for the flora up here, but there are lichens, mosses, and tiny plants which do survive:

 One of the most beautiful is rare at this altitude and latitude, but it does exist, the arctic thrift flower:

 The mountainsides have astonishing color!  This photo is not enhanced:

  

We descended the volcano’s slope and went to the adjacent beach, a full half mile deep shore of black volcanic sand with occasional grassy hillocks, overlooking offshore islands:

 Finally, we visited two stunning waterfalls, Skogafoss:

 And Seijalandsfoss, which has a footpath taking you behind the falls:

  

Tomorrow national parks, geysers, and ending in Reykjavik.