TRIP TO ICELAND

It's 4.30 am, it's an early start but I am excited: I'm off to Iceland today! My flight takes off from London Heathrow ; that is where I am meeting up with two of my cousins... it's not the first time we embark on an adventure together!

On my way there, I have got my usual companion: my lonely planet book! I'm reading up on Iceland and all it has to offer... I hope we'll have enough time to see everything in a week.

Roads near Reykjavik

On the plane now, and just telling my cousins that there are only 300.000 habitants on the whole island... That's mad, that's barely more inhabitants than the city of Liège! Okay, I don’t know what to expect now.

As we land in Kevlavik Airport, there is hardly no one here... we go to the car rental desk, wow no queue! We pick up our car and off we go... we ask the clerk if we have winter tyres on our car, he nearly laughs at us: "there isn’t gonna be any snow this week".

Off we go, we follow the road signs for Reykjavik. It feels like we are on another planet, the earth looks dry with these black-ash rocks, no trees grow here! We finally arrive at our hotel, it's lovely, we have a beautiful view of the city. It’s quiet here, it doesn’t feel like a capital city. We go out that evening but it's so cold... we aren’t prepared for this yet. We ate at a Mexican restaurant, I know a bit strange in Iceland, but apparently they like hot food here, I wonder why!! That evening we go back to the hotel with bottled water, as we will probably be thirsty during the night. The receptionist looks at us with a "what on earth are you doing" look! You can drink tap water here! Oh ok great, cheaper trip for me then (I'm a student so whatever I can get is good). And he is right, the tap water is lovely here... it is fresh and cold, it feels like it’s straight out of the mountains.

Around the Blue Lagoon

The next day, we start visiting: we went to the famous Blue Lagoon, amazing! You walk out in your swimming costume, it is 0c°, you try to run towards the hot water, but it's too slippery... Once you go in you never want to go out again, it is lovely! You could spen hours swimming around... and then you put some mud on your face! Why not I guess! Once you take it off, your skin feels and looks great!

Blue Lagoon

We then drive towards the mudpools, pfuuff it stinks here! It smells like rotten eggs, the smell gets stronger as you get closer to the boiling, bubbling mud ; you really get a sense of the power of Earth here!

The next day, we started the drive around the island. More amazing scenery, we nearly feel like we are in a Lord of the Ring movie and driving towards the fiery depths to Lord Sauron.

We see more mudpools and geysers; these amazing explosions of water! And now a huge glacier. And more incredible this random house at the bottom of it. It's so hard to imagine getting up in the morning and seeing this glacier! It looks like its slowly moving towards the house.

Days go by and we stay in isolated hotels, see more mountains and volcanoes and more of the glacier. We see amazing waterfalls, they are huge and the weather is so cold that some bits are frozen! We go out looking for the Northern Lights every night but so far not much luck...

Waterfall

As we drive towards the north it gets darker, and suddenly we are caught in a huge blizzard! We don’t know what to do : keep going or stop... we see the odd car driving so we figure we can keep going. More and more snow is falling... what did that clerk at the car rental say, no snow!! I wish I could see him now!! We have to drive slower and slower and we seem to be going up and up. We finally arrive at our destination : Akureyri , its dark so we don’t get a real feel for the place but it looks so cute. We can finally take showers, but it stinks!! The water smells like rotten eggs. Not so nice for the person going in after you and you have to explain it's the water that smells... however your skin and hair is lovely and soft!!

The next morning we can explore at last, it's a lovely village and it's covered in snow! I feel like I’m in the north pole.

Icy lake

We continue driving seeing more lava fields and hot pools. Luckily it's not snowing anymore but it's so cold today. As we drive around, it gets down to -16c°!! Luckily we are well equipped; we have our thermal clothes on. The roads are well taken care of here, there are constant snow ploughs around and the Icelanders are clever, they use their geothermal heat on the roads, keeping them clear.

We are getting closer and closer to Reykjavik again, it's nearly the end of our journey, but I don’t want it to end it's so amazing here! And we haven’t seen the Northern Lights yet, only one night left to see them now...

Aurora Borealis

We get to Reykjavik, it's nice to be somewhere familiar again, it nearly feels like home! After eating, we decide to go on our last Aurora hunting trip!! So we drive out of the city, as far as possible from the lights. We stop on a small parking on the side of the road, we are not the only ones here! We quickly turn off our headlights and get out the car... there they are!! This amazing green haze in the sky, moving around! Incredible!!

The perfect ending to our trip!!!