Iceland

It's been around six months since I took the route to the guesthouse: firstly, I now know why the roads are in such bad condition here; part of the road was shut off so they could re-surface it and yet they had foolishly left a slight gap which cars were squeezing - me included since I didn't feel like turning around - how on earth they're ever going to clear cars off long enough to get the tarmac down I do not know. Secondly, the hospital on the corner that used to be my landmark for my turn off the university road has been so altered with new buildings and walls that I almost missed the turn. Whole swathes of other areas nearby have been knocked down and are awaiting re-development. I do not think people who haven't lived here can comprehend how amazing these changes appear to my eyes.

Anyway, Iceland. You all thought it looked like this, admit it. In winter, it might but in summer, snow only survives in the high areas. Most days, the weather was like a Perth winter day, cool but clear.

Some of the landscapes are like another world.








And some were just plain pretty (though this photo is mainly to prove that it wasn't all snow and black rocks).




I have to say I was somewhat disappointed with some of the errors we came across in the Lonely Planet. We went to one isolated restaurant based on its description of their menu, walked inside and asked for a table for two, only to hear, 'We're happy for you to have lunch with us but we are not a restaurant any longer': yep, we'd walked into a private home and demanded that they feed us. For a book published in May to still list a restaurant that closed two years ago is pretty poor (you're wondering how we made such a mistake: all the farms are signposted and the restuarant had the same name as the farm; many of the restuarants are converted private homes and this one looked just like those, including several tables and chair sets outside; no, we didn't eat with them).

The other error was more serious: in the section on the Interior it listed the tour to the Askja caldera as only running from mid-July; it was only when we got around to the north that we found out that that was a misprint and it actually runs from mid-June. By sheerest luck, we were going to be in the area on the day the tour was running, and were able to get places on it. And if I had missed seeing this part of the isolated interiour because of the Lonely Planet's carelessness, you can bet that would have been the last of their guide books for me.
Fantastic guide on that tour, by the way, sang us Icelandic folk songs and told us Icelandic fairy tales all the way home.


I could post photos all day: waterfalls and mountain valleys, geysers, the Blue Lagoon where the water is 38 degrees and an unhealthier luminent shade of blue, lava fields and black deserts made from glacial floods. There's so much to see, so much to do (golf, diving, horse-riding, hiking, camping, bird-watching, climbing, caving etc etc etc), and so many new animals to eat - the Ambassador added horse and reindeer to his list, but missed out on adding whale (for obvious reasons) and puffin (out of season, the only restaurant serving the cute little fellas also served whale).

Let me leave it with these last two photos: one, the dog sledding team who pulled us across a glacier for an hour, with their musher (official title). These dogs were the stars of Tomb Raider. One of them, as a puppy, peed on Angelina Jolie. They're Greenland dogs, not huskies.

And the other photo: the lake at the toe of a glacier, full of icebergs.






Let's see. Reading The Hours, watching Fever Pitch, still knitting the Dr Who scarf. No idea when I'll post next, depends on internet access.