Road Trip

It’s Friday night, which means not only is this day three of our road trip through Iceland, but that this is also my last night in Iceland. I’ve got to say it’s been a great month here, and we’re definitely going out with a bang. We’ve seen such a variety of landscapes and we’re going to even more tomorrow on our last day together. But first I guess I should go over the past few days.

Wednesday we left Akureyri and had to say goodbye to our home stay families. I know I only knew them ten days, but my family was so nice and hospitable that it was saddening to leave them. They were so full of love and it was great to watch them interact with each other. Even the older brother, who didn’t really engage in the family activities, would still tease his little sister in a loving way that showed he cared. I hope I can visit them again someday, and I’m so glad I got to know them during this trip.

The first leg of our drive wasn’t very long. We went to a geothermal power plant called Krafla (pronounced crap-la. Seriously.). We took a quick tour of the smelly place. The smell of eggs was quite pungent. They also had some weird artwork on the outside of the building. I don’t think I got a picture of it myself, but I’ll check to see if anyone else did.

That night we got free dinner at the canteen at the power plant. Apparently the workers actually live on site, so all their meals are there. We also spent the night at Krafla. I doubt I’ll ever get another chance to spend the night at a geothermal power plant, and I have to say that I enjoyed it. The accommodations were really modest, but it was a nice enough place. Plus they also gave us breakfast, and I’m a fan of free food.

Thursday was an extremely long day for us. We started off and immediately lost paved road because we were traveling to the highlands – the center of Iceland where pretty much no one lives and there are no paved roads. I had already spent hours on dirt/gravel roads because of our trip to the Arctic Circle, so I wasn’t exactly thrilled to experience a bumpy road for hours again. However, it definitely turned out to be worth it. The surrounding land was awesome and half the time didn’t even look like earth because it was lava flows. But after about four hours of driving, we came to a volcanic crater full of water. This was our destination. We all stripped down (which was a little embarrassing for a second, but I got over it since how often do you get the chance to swim in a volcanic crater?) and got into the warm water. It did smell terrible because of the sulfur, but I got used to it after a while. The water was the same as the cloudy, blue water at the blue lagoon, only natural. It was great.

The rest of the day pretty much consisted of constant driving. We had stops every now and then, but it was just hours and hours of car time. It reminded me of Alaska when we drove so many places. We did go through the largest of forest in Iceland. Usually there aren’t too many trees in Iceland, but this was actually a decent sized forest. Finally at midnight we made it to our hostel for the night where I quickly crashed for the night.

Today we visited an aluminum smelter, the industry that sucks up most of the electricity that Iceland produces. It was interesting, but I know I could never work in a factory like that. They also provided us free lunch, and we were all quite happy about that. Now we’re at another hostel and we just had our last group dinner, funded by Burch. It was a lobster dinner. I wasn’t that thrilled since I’ve never had lobster before and wasn’t that interested, but it actually ended up being decent. I’m not interested in eating it again, but I wasn’t totally disappointed.

Besides all the great stuff we’ve seen the past two days, we also got to experience car trouble. On Wednesday, the breaks kept overheating and we had to stop several times to pour water on them. Today something happened where the car wouldn’t shift into a higher gear. All this added more excitement to our travels. Luckily tomorrow we’ll have a different car, which will be good since my flight leaves at 5pm and then it’s back home to Raleigh. As upset as I’ll be leaving this great place, I am happy to be going home. Seven weeks has been the perfect time away from home, but I know it’s time to return. So my next update will be Raleigh and I’ll get working on uploading photos once I’m home.