Today was a bit of a travel day, but mostly painless since the flight to Northern Iceland was at 9:30 and we didn’t have to get there until about 9:10. Not since the 90’s have I gotten on an airplane without a security check, so this was an interesting, although a little disconcerting experience. The flight to Akureyri was only 45 minutes, so the very cramped Bombardier aircraft was not so intolerable. It would have been a nightmare on a longer flight since there literally was no leg room. It was a very clear day and the plane didn’t get too high, so it was nice looking out the window and seeing the mostly frozen landscape of Iceland.
Upon arrival, we immediately started a bit of a tour of the area. Besides a brief driving tour of Akureyri, we also stopped at Goðafoss (waterfall) on the way to the hotel.
After Goðafoss, we basically heading straight to the hotel to check in and have some lunch before continuing the tour with our guide, Rabbi (RAB ee). One of the main stops was at Dimmuborgir which is a gathering of trolls that got so out of hand that they forgot about the sunrise and the trolls all turned to stone. They’ve been crumbling ever since. Some of the trolls have even been immortalised in the act of kissing another troll.
Scientists will probably tell you some story about lava tubes and lakes, but after having been to the site, it is quite obvious that the formations are petrified trolls.
Another main stop was the Námafjall Hverir mud pots. There are also some very steamy former bore holes that were used by the Germans before the war to extract sulphur for gunpowder. Unfortunately, when we were there, it was so steamy from the cold air that the entire area was shrouded in steam. The sulfur smell was very strong in this area, but not too bad for a short stay.
The entire tour basically took us around Lake Mývatn which is apparently a great place to see the Aurora borealis due to the lack of light pollution and the wide open skies. Back at the Sel Hotel on Lake Mývatn, our main tour guide, David gave us a short lecture on constellations, planets, comets and the Aurora borealis that we could see from the area. When dinner was finished, we all geared up and headed outside, and the Northern Lights had once again obliged us with a faint display. There was a bit of a haze, so the Northern Lights were not exactly crisp, but we managed to spot moons around Jupiter, Comet Lovejoy, the glow from the nearby erupting volcano, and got some nice pictures of the Northern Lights which I don’t actually possess due to my lack of an appropriate camera with the ability to use a 5 to 20 second exposure time. Hopefully, someone will send me some pictures and I can add them to this post later.
Unfortunately, the weather is supposed to warm up which usually means more cloud cover, but we are all keeping our fingers crossed for the next three nights.