Iceland the First Few Days

 On Saturday I flew from Dublin to Iceland, meeting my friend Dimity (who'd came from Launceston).  On arrival I went looking for a late lunch and discovered that the Icelandic Handknitting Association's shop was a few doors from my hotel. So I investigated it before obtaining some lunch and an hour later went back and made some purchases of the famous Icelandic yarn Lopi in case it's not open when we're back there next weekend. 

Saturday night we joined a gadventures tour of 18 people. Sunday morning we left Reykjavik and headed north for about five hours. I was amazed when we went through our first fjord tunnel, about 6km long. The government has built many of them to make travel easier for tourists and locals but is now also starting to build them between fishing villages and larger towns to get people to stay in those villages. Two thirds of the population are in the capital. 

When we arrived in Akureyri we headed straight out on a whale watching tour. It was a bit of a dud, we only really saw the fin and tail of a Northern Bottle Nosed Whale but the scenery was stunning. The hills changed colours in the light, purples, pinks and browns, amazing bit different show up in the photos I took. We did see a few puffins flying on the water, my first time to see them and I discovered they're much smaller than I had thought. It was freezing cold though, with a high of 8°C I had to keep reminding myself it is summer not winter. 

Today involved another early start to try and beat the  cruise ships but it seemed the Germans had gotten out very early. At one stop I counted nine cruise ship buses. 

Our first stop was at Goðafoss waterfall, this was where a leader of Iceland about a 1000 years ago supposedly threw away his Norwegian gods when he became a Christian.

We then checked out some 2000 year old lava fields and lakes in Dimmuborgir and some stinky thermal pools at Námaskarð.

After lunch we visited the most powerful waterfall in Europe. Dettifoss waterfall was quite impressive. It's also in the middle of lava fields and fed by a glacier we'll visit later in the week.

Then it was a three hour drive over a steep mountain to the fishing village of Bakagerdi which is becoming an economy based on tourism instead. Apparently people come to hike in the area and to see the puffins.