Iceland

The Land of Rotten Eggs, Playgrounds, and “Nudie Showers”

As promised, here’s the Iceland post written 5 years ago (I hope you aren’t too dizzy from the time travel). I haven’t edited it so here is Asher’s “raw” post. Also, sorry I’m very unorganised…

Well first of all, Iceland is not called Iceland because it is covered in ice, but to encourage more Vikings to go to Greenland, which should be called Iceland, but then again, they named it Greenland to encourage more Vikings to move from tiny Iceland to huge Greenland.   Anyway, let me talk you through what we did when we drove through Iceland for 17 days (21 days including Reykjavik).

The first three days in Reykjavik we stayed in a really nice apartment – #7 on Skólavôðustigur (!) rented from Hotel Odinsve. It was a great spot, literally just across the road from a brilliant coffee house, Kaffi, which is Icelandic for coffee. We went there three times, each time with me having a hot chocolate with whipped cream and cocoa sprinkles. We were all very excited about the next few weeks motorhome-ing around Iceland. In total we went to 14 campsites, staying at each campsite for one night, but stayed in the Icelandair Hotel in Akureyri for a couple of nights. Some of my favourite bits were whale watching, snowmobiling, the scenery, and the pools.

First of all: Iceland is absolutely amazingly beautiful. That is why, my first highlight goes to a new (1500) year old shield volcano. We climbed-well, walked up a few hundreds of steps-to the top. We then went round a bend, and the most astonishing sight greeted us: ocean glittering in the sun behind me, rolling mossy plains to my left, One of the biggest glaciers in Iceland to my right, and in front of me snow patched mountains. It was spectacular.

Secondly: I would assume you know I like to swim. I always have. Every place I have lived so far has had a pool. For my second one, I award the highlight to the first Icelandic pool and the two natural hot springs we went to. Now, the first ‘Nudie Shower’ pool (Nesi) we went to was the local pool at Hvammstangi. There was an (unfortunately) slow water slide, but it was still lots of fun. To be honest, we got in trouble because we didn’t com to mummy when she called. The first Natural pool was really quite small, only about 2 metres across and about 5 long. But it was literally a 10 second walk to the ocean water-colder than cape town! This pool also had really nice views, of a fjord surrounded by rocky hills. The second Natural spring was quite hot, and absolutely huge. The water was white, the colour you would find in a milky eye. The only down side was that every breath you take, a horrible odour hits you-yep-rotten eggs. The weird thing is, milky eye rotten egg water tastes like sugar water, with a gagging sensation at the end.

Now we do snowmobiling and Whale watching. Whale watching was almost exactly in a line north of snowmobiling. Whale watching was in Husavik, and although it was raining most of the time, I still had lots of fun. we saw around 11 whales, a mixture of Humpbacks and Minkes. It was so much fun, once the boat had to suddenly stop, because a minke was breaching less then 10 metres away. And then snowmobiling, we went so fast the hail, snow and rain hurt my face. This was on Vatnajokull glacier.

But by far, the highlight of this leg of the trip was actually not an activity, but the actual campervan-ing. When we picked it up, we were at the place for about 3 hours, just learning how to do everything, paying, and renting extras. The company we got the camper van is Touring Cars, which has over eighty vans in Iceland, but also has other offices and rentals  

Well, that covers this month’s travels, and next month, we are going to see polar bears, go tubing on a lake, and simply relax.

BUT WE HAVE TO DO SCHOOL!!!

(just text books)

– Asher