Iceland Adventure

We had a bank holiday Monday this past weekend for May Day. Not 100% sure what the holiday was except that in some parts of the country, I think there is Morris dancing and cheese rolling. I however went for the long weekend to Iceland.

Seeing as it is summer and I had once read that Iceland was really nice and Greenland was really cold and the countries had been so named to keep the tourists away from Iceland, I packed a few sweaters and some socks. Oh. My. Gosh. Was I wrong! I should have packed a woolly mammoth to wear. I was absolutely freezing so for three days wore my all of my clothes, including my pajamas and my boyfriend’s swim trunks underneath my clothes.

The weather was very strange. On the first morning, it was bright and sunny, then within 15 minutes, it was hailing! I did not sign up for rain or HAIL on this trip. Absolutely not. I hadn’t been feeling well (this is a vast understatement), so when my boyfriend and I found our way to the tourist office, I was so happy to get out of the hail that I said yes far too quickly to the two tours he wanted to go on.
We found ourselves an hour later (first a stop for warmer socks and hat) on the first tour – 6 hours on a bus venturing in for 3 hours into the mainland of Iceland to see a natural geyser which shoots boiling hot water into the air every 5 minutes. (Some crazy lunatics actually stood underneath this – how they did not get scalded, I have absolutely no idea!) We stayed there for 45 minutes, then zoomed over to the cascading waterfall for another half hour, got absolutely soaking wet when the wind changed direction, and hopped back on the bus for the 3 hour journey home.
Day 2 – My boyfriend is actually lucky I am still dating him. Really lucky. I have a very overactive imagination and a number of my fears were realized – actually fears I never knew existed. In my antibiotic/aspirin fuelled high, I had agreed to a tour that let me experience TERROR - complete blackness to complete white.

In one, I was underground in a cave rock climbing and I do not do rock climbing. Think Sarah Jessica Parker in a cave. Completely inappropriate but cute shoes. We experienced pitch blackness. My head light was broke.
(this was before the top of the glacier while we could still see)

An hour earlier, I was in a jeep in a white out on a glacier. My fellow travelers were urging the guide on to the top of the glacier. The snow swirled around us, the jeep got stuck, GPS stopped working and I was the voice of reason pleading to go back down. Did we? Oh no, we were only at 1,200 meters of 1,400 total high. My eyes were playing tricks and I could see the horizon just in front of us, we were about to plunge to our deaths – PLEASE CAN WE GO HOME!!!??? No, we had to get out and make snow angels on the glacier.

I actually did get out of the jeep, but didn’t move much until the guide stomped on the snow and told me to move around. I couldn’t let everyone make snow angels without me, so finally I threw myself down and made my snow angel on the glacier. The snow was dense and hard so it was really difficult to do, but I dug my arms and legs in and darn it, made the best angel there. I showed the gal from South America who had never seen snow before how to do it. And you know what, it was absolutely beautiful. When I stopped panicking I realized that the snow had a blue tinge to it because it was reflecting the sky. It was white (with a bluish cast) as far as the eye could see. I didn’t know if I would ever get down that darn glacier, but darn it, my snow angel was the best one that glacier had seen.
Tomorrow – Would we escape the glacier in the jeep or did air rescue come to save us? Is the boyfriend history?

p.s. – this is a craft blog not rucksack adventures, so stay tuned and the crafts will be revealed...or will they?