The flight from Toronto to Reykjavik was great, IcelandAir is an excellent airline. There was subtle, dancing LED lighting from above which give the impression that the entire cabin was being flooded with the Northern Lights—a peaceful addition to the 6 hour journey. I also loved that on each seats head-rest there was a word in Icelandic along with it's meaning in English. Sitting at the back of the plane, I was able to pick up a couple interesting Icelandic phrases as I found my way to my seat, eventually arriving at Eldfjall, from eldur (“fire”) + fjall (“mountain”), Icelandic for Volcano. The highlight of course was the image above—whilst navigating the southern tip of Greenland, I was able to spot the Aurora Borealis across the horizon. Well, not at first. Sitting behind the wing I thought I could see a faint white glow, almost like a cloud backlit from the moon—however it didn't look quite right. I had the bright lights of the screen in front of me removing my night vision so I sat there for a good 15 minutes with one eye shut until the light show began to reveal its true colours. It was truly magnificent. Knowing what I was now seeing I got out my camera and began the journey of capturing it, trying to find all the different camera settings that would work best. Instead of sleeping, I ended up taking photos for an hour, and as the intensity of the lights grew, I managed to find the shot I was after—that is to say, a shot that wasn't completely blurry.
I arrived at Keflavik Airport in Reykjavik comfortably 6 hours later—losing 5 hours, now GMT+0, 13 hours behind New Zealand. After a comfortable but expensive bus trip to the city centre I spent the morning walking around, to the Hallgrimskirkja church, the weekly Kolaportið Flea Market, and waterfront before stopping for some Icelandic Fish & Chips, at a store named exactly that. There isn't exactly a menu, as it revolves around what's been caught that day. On the day I arrived I had Ling, which is a delicious deep-running cod-like fish. It was fantastic, and a great introduction to the great food, particularly seafood, here in Iceland. In the afternoon I checked into the first hostel of a few planned, which I'd booked for a couple nights, and slept from around 3pm until early the next morning, without a top sheet or duvet—because that was an additional cost apparently, and at this point it feels as if I'm half a step removed from being a hobo, and forking out for proper bedding is a frivolous expense.
I was (perhaps slightly ill-) advised that during the Winter season pre-booking tours wasn't of major importance, and that arranging a week of tours is quickly and simply arranged upon arrival. I spent the next day digging through piles of different guides and brochures on all the tours available, and it was quite a task. There are so many different activities, and a crazy number of different operators. It's rather overwhelming trying to find the best options, particularly when there is a good amount of variance between each operator and the exact activities and combinations they offer. Not to mention trying to retain place names like Þórisjökull and Eiríksjökull (and these are the easy ones...), certainly presents challenges of it's own.
I ended up heading out on the Highlands Northern Lights tour, leaving just before sunset at 6pm, and returning just shy of 2am. It was quite pricey, but instead of packing into a standard bus and trailing around the highways in search of the Aurora, the tour package offered a trip all the way out to Iceland's second largest glacier, Langjökull, with a beastly special modified vehicle which then takes you up on a 3 hour trip on top of the glacier. For months I've been researching the Aurora Borealis, and I'm plugged into several different weather and solar-wind tracking resources, and the forecast looked perfect when I booked a few days leading up to the excursion. Of course, once arrived the entire sky was blanketed in complete cloud clover, with ridiculously intense wind — us, only sheltered by the truck for miles and miles. The lights were likely dancing above in their full glory (according to NASA they were), but there was no way we were seeing them. The trip was definitely not a write-off however. I met a couple of crazy American ladies who kidnapped me for the duration of the tour, after a shared bond of giggles surrounding double-entendre's passing Iceland's famous Phallological museum. A bottle of wine and more beer than I had pockets for (and in this climate, one tends to have a lot of pockets) mysteriously found it's way onto the bus, so we were having a great time while we effectively made our way to the dark side of the moon. No Aurora, but more wind than Iceland knew what to do with. The force was incredible, the ice chunks unforgiving, and I'll never forgot walking off 50 or so metres into complete nothing-ness with the mission of securing a patch of yellow-snow.
Anyhow, I didn't manage to capture much of the trip, including much of the gorgeous sunset (#wishtheycleanedthewindows), but I'll always have a couple great new friends, a few snaps and the rather fitting video I managed to capture with my phone below:
With a lot of tours cancelled the following day due to a decent storm rolling in on the southern coast, I spent my time shopping and looking around Reykjavik a little bit further, not bringing my camera out too often. On my bucket list was to leave Iceland with a souvenir of a traditional handmade Icelandic lopapeysa wool sweater. It definitely lightened my piggybank a great deal, something which I was prepared for, but I think this will be a great piece of Iceland I can bring back home, made nearby by an Icelandic grandmother.
Later in the evening I ended up with my two new compadres at a bar called The Big Lebowski, with decor well and truly earning the name. The price of booze in Iceland can be rather exorbitant, so I try to limit myself to happy-hours and my duty-free stash in my hipflask—I even saw a standard 330ml bottle of beer for 1.400ISK ($14NZD!). It's possible however to remain in happy hour for most of the night, if you know which Bars to hop to, and don't mind walking in the cold. 500-600ISK ($5-6NZD) is much easier to swallow. Fantastically enough though, there doesn't seem to be any sort of liquor ban, so a purchase of a coke, and a quick trip outside, produces a magical rum&coke. You can also buy drinks at closing, and they'll give you plastic cups so you can drink on the cold walk home, or to the next bar. So at 6am the streets are full with these cups, but it's all cleaned by sunrise. Must be due to all the elves in Iceland.
There are so many photo spots I haven't visited just within Reykjavik. I've managed to enjoy the nightlife here every night for an entire week, and have powered through, completely sleep deprived. So, battling the harsh weather this week and walking to all these places has taken a back seat. I've got lots more photos to sort and upload from my day trips outside of the city, so I'll try get to that soon...
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