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Reykjavik: A Study in Contrasts
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Category Archives: tourism
The Puffins of Rauðarnes
The puffins of Rauðarnes are a fun bunch. The walk is stupendous. It’s 7 km, return, but you could easily spend days sauntering along.
You can brave the rough, steep road to Borgisfjörður Eystr and see the puffins up close and personal, and they are really, really great, but this is better, because they aren’t so crowded, which gives a different dynamic, and more goofiness. These are, like, country puffins.
Plus, the gulls are sneaky. See her below?
And unlike the puffins in Borgisfjörður Eystril, they aren’t controlled by hidden netting to preserve their habitat and green it, so these are puffins in the raw, so to speak, which means erosion, yes, but also (see below) a penthouse!
Very cool!
Turn off the road to Vellir Farm just north of Svalbard, just north of Þorshöfn. You will soon be there, puffing on your 3.5 km walk to the puffins, delighted by the sculpted sea stacks and caves on the way. Get there soon, though. The puffins have an ocean to get back to. Oh, by the way, if you’re lucky, you can get pretty close. How about 3 metres?
Such beautiful birds!
Of Seals and Men
Notice how little attention the seals are paying to either global warming or humans attracted to global warming and seals.
There’s a lovely crowd of them off of the mouth of the glacial river flowing out of the glacial lagoon these days, but, to tell the truth, if you go the the Selfljót and look for them in the estuary at the tide change you will have a lot more fun, even if you don’t see a single one.
This was the Iceland that Gunnar left for Denmark, and the one he returned to when war threatened the world. It’s still there, if you look for it, because even if Gunnar didn’t find it again, and you aren’t likely to, either, with a little luck the search will be the finding. Iceland will change you, if you work at it.
Parking in Reykjavik: Not Where but What
Parking a car in Reykjavik is tough…
… because houses and hotels are already parked in the available spots, more hotels every month. Parallel parking skills won’t help. Cross parking is the trick.
The Edge of the World
Humans travel by the millions to Iceland every year, to stand at the edge of the Earth and look into the abyss.
The Last of the Glaciers Melts in the Jökulsárlón
Notice how it looks back without blinking.
Not Post Modern But Post Herring
What do you do with all those industrial plastic fish bins after they have been used to empty out the sea?
Egilsstaðir
You make a beach, that’s what you do — into a lake that is now severely compromised by hydroelectric dam run-off, and then you sell it.
Something’s Fishy
I love Egilsstaðir, truly, precisely because it is not romantic.
What Happens When You Leave the Path
Hraunfosser
Don’t leave the path.
The Bronze Lagoon of Iceland
There is the Blue Lagoon, and the Iceberg Lagoon, but the Bronze Lagoon is best.
Breiðabólsstaðarlón
(Hint: It’s in between the other two.)_
Glacial Tongue @ the Global Warming Show
I thought I’d look up from the Glacial Lagoon …
… show of humans being beautiful for themselves and for each other by posing (warmly) within luxurious images of humanly-initiated global climate change…
… to see what the glacier thought of all this. Ah, well, look, I’m glad it did. The cheeky thing…
… was sticking its tongue out at us! Just a tiny bit. Between compressed lips.
Another Reason to Leave Reykjavik: Learning the Language of Water
If you stay in Reykjavik, vodka’s the thing. Drink that stuff and you might forget where you are.
But if you go halfway to the complete opposite end of the country, the water speaks at last, not with a bottle but with the words that grow still on the very bottom edge of the sky:
Lagarfljót, April
Your choice, between a bar full of travellers and the voices of trolls. Flights to Egilstaðir are cheap. Just $120 return. You could drop three times that much, just having dinner and drinks with a friend in town. Off you go.
A Farm in Iceland 
