Weekend Trip

I have been in Iceland for a about a month a and a half and had only been on one real trip outside of Iceland's capital of 200,000 people, Reykjavik, until this weekend. Me, Anthony Rosborough, Veronica Baker, and Emily Holland all decided to rent a car for Saturday and Sunday and make a trip to the Glacial Lagoon, Jökulsálón, about 4.5 hours from Reykjavik. Anthony and Veronica picked up the car Friday night, and we all loaded up 8:00 Saturday morning and head out. We printed off directions from Google maps, but apparently the main roads have actual names different from their highway number and Google did not have the same name as the ones on the signs. Also, it snowed quite a bit the night before, so almost all the signs were covered in snow from the direction we were driving. Luckily, we brought a huge map of Iceland that we had to use after we got a little lost trying to get out of the city. After about 15 minutes of not knowing where we were or what road to get on because of snow covered signs, we found the right direction and were on our way.

This is the route we took (in green). We basically covered the whole southern half of the country which is quite amazing considering how different the landscape is every 15 minutes. We drove through snow, hail, icy roads, rain, clouds, and sun all in about 3 hours. One very interesting thing about Icelandic weather is that no matter what the weather is like currently, it will almost certainly change in 30 minutes, sometimes more drastically than others. Also, It is still mind-boggling how fast you can go from a city municipality area with around 200,000 people to rocky, uninhabitable terrain with less than 1,000 people.

Population of cities we passed through:
Reykjavik - 119,110
Kópavogur (Reykjavik suburb) - 30,401
Hveragerdi - 2,281 (2008)
Selfoss - 6,300
Hella -  750
Hvolsvöllur - 800-1400
Vík - 300
Kirkjubaejarklaustur - 160
Skaftafell - <50
Höfn - 2,200

These pictures/videos will be alternating between my ghetto camera phone and pics courtesy of Veronica Baker.

Our first stop was at a rather large waterfall.

We must have passed at least 10 visible tiny waterfalls on mountains on the whole driving trip. They are all over this country. Next, a stop on the side of the road to pet some Icelandic horses. They are unique in that they are a "five-gaited" breed and Icelandic horses are bred in Icelandic with the government forbidden the importing of horses and exported animals are not allowed to return. They also have a double coat to keep them warm which almost looks like hair.

Random old house built into a hill.

Another huge water fall with about 700 steps to the top of it and an incredible view.

 Definitely did not want to slide off that edge...

 View from the top

Yelling from the top!

Stream that leads to top of waterfall

Made it to Vík, the halfway point to our destination. The black sand beach there was named one of the 10 most beautiful beaches in 1991, I think.

 We stayed at a Hvoll Hostel which turned out to be my favorite place in the whole trip. It was completely quiet, virtually no wind, incredibly nice place with huge kitchen, cute dog, beautiful view in all directions, etc. We also went out behind our building at night and could see so many stars.

Us and a couple of guys from Spain were the only kids in this place which just further contributed to the peaceful, quiet location of the Hostel. Day 2, we left around 9 and went to see some Glaciers.

This was the focus of our trip. The Vatnajökull Glacier (which you can see on the map of Iceland at the beginning of this post) is the world's largest glacier outside of the arctic regions. All along the drive from Skaftfell to Höfn, the are many 5 kilometer roads that you can exit on to drive up closer to view different parts of the glacier. We stopped at a few of these turnouts, but didn't have the appropriate vehicle to go on all the dirt roads.

After seeing the glacier, we kept driving onward until we arrived at Höfn. Our last stop before Höfn was another beautifully rusted, old, abandoned house.

Once again, the weather in this country is absolutely amazing. Here and an hour east, it was essentially a summer day with all sorts of sunshine. Another hour on the road back to Reykjavik, and it was snowing/raining with 90% of everything covered in a white blanket of snow. Here are some videos.

We were a little too lightly packed in the food category so we grabbed some bacon wrapped hot dogs at a gas station in Höfn, turned around and began our journey back. This trip was a whole lot of fun and I can barely wait for next weekend when me and 50 other kids get on a bus north to Akureyri for the skiing trip! This past week has been too good to me. Been all over the South, so now we'll see what the north has to offer. Not to mention I'll have to do all this again in the summer when the grass is actually green, and then I'll be in for a real treat.

I Am Officially Old

I mean, I supposed maybe 20 isn't that old. But in my opinion, the gap between 19 and 20 seems like a pretty big one. 20 years old? Really? A little over 2 years of school left, and then I will be working full-time. It's nuts. And what else is nuts is that I can now legally buy alcohol in this country, but not back home. But anyways, Binni mom cooked some delicious casserole and a chocolate cake and me and a couple friends went over to his house and hung out.

BROS

Long time buds, Binni & Skúli

Before we left for Binni's, I was surprised by the girls in the dorm with a birthday cheesecake and one of my favorite birthday gifts of all time to date, a bacon cup. We got the idea from this ridiculous Youtube video account called Epic Meal Time. In this show a group of guys cook the most calorie-ridden, fattening, grease-filled, bacon-dwelling concoction and in one episode they make a cup out of bacon and drink Four Loko out of it.

Me and Emily had been talking about trying to make one soon and Emily bought like 4 whole packs of bacon because she seriously wanted to make it. So Emily took it upon herself to figure out how to wrap a tin cup in bacon, cook it, and present it to me for my birthday. Hopefully pictures will be up soon, but it looked pretty darn good for a first effort. We didn't have any Four Loko, so we had to make it ourselves lol. Also, only the outside layer of the bacon weave wrapped around the tin cup was cooked, so when you took a bite out of it, half of the bacon was still raw. All in all, it was a stellar birthday, one I won't soon forget. The only thing I can ask for is MORE BACON CUPS in the future.

Here We Go

So, apparently at the University of Iceland there is a 'test week' next week and since all of my classes only have a final exam, they just decided to have no class next week and just give us a little bit more homework. Hey O! It's basically our Spring Break come early. We don't actually have a Spring Break, just a week off from classes during Easter which is in late April I believe.

Family finally got a webcam and mic to Skype. It was definitely nice seeing the gang at home face-to-face. Took a screen shot of them trying to figure it out haha.

Birthday is Thursday. Binni's mom offered to have the party at Binni's house which should be fun. Plans for next weekend are in the works with the possibility of a car rental and a trip a couple of hours out of Reykjavík. Sorry for the lack of updates. This week was mainly just filled with soccer with the ESN kids and watching the Champion's League online. Soccer, The Wire, and listening to music/podcasts constitutes most of my free time...oh and making fun of Colin Chisholm on Facebook etc, etc.

Oh yea, got my residence permit in the mail too. Finally. Looking like a thug.