Domi in Ice-wonder-land: March 2014

On the first weekend of March I went for another one day trip not that far from Reykjavik. As Iga and Ola were visiting Iceland for one week I invited them to join me and my friends, two Polish guys from Lowersilesia region that now live in Iceland, at our Golden Circle tour.

I was recovering after sudden attack of stomach flue virus that made me suffer a lot for almost two past days so I was a little bit dizzy and didn't want to go hiking on that day. Funny enough that after drinking festival beer called 'Jesús' I felt so sick that I had to call the word 'jesús' many times last night.. I barely survived the night.. We had 3 days of Beer Festival to celebrate 25 anniversary of prohibition's end. On March 1st it is celebrated here Icelandic Beer Day. And that's interesting story because 'on March 1st 1989, the 74 year old spell of prohibition was lifted off Iceland' and this is a great reason to try some of the delicious local beers. So I tried this new one..

It was on Friday night, just one day after spectacular red aurora borealis, as I heard from my friends, it was the biggest and the greatest aurora in last two years. After finishing Fat Thursday meeting at Polish Embassy we decided to go aurora hunting as the forecast was showing incredibly big magnetic storm and even the sky was so blue, huge ribbon became visible on the sky. I let know Iga and Ola who just arrived to Iceland, and after watching green ribbon above the KEX hostel we went in two cars to Thingvellir National Park. Aurora was so huge and immense, like wings of falling angel, was dancing on many sides, intensively red and green. And the red colour is not that much common so we were incredibly thrilled and happy! Standing on the wooden ramp at Thingvellir we were surrounded only by nature and immense stars, even a big one was falling down and it look like a huge torch!
One of my colleagues helped me to set up my camera, so the photo that I place here is only in half mine. He set higher ISO so the colours are more intensive. Just have a look!

And coming back to our Sunday trip (it was exactly 2nd of March) we started our trip from Thingvellir rifts to show the girls this beautiful place during the day. Here you see Thingvellavatn lake, huge and awesome. It was quite windy but we were so lucky with the light. We had a walk around the place and took some nice photos.

Then we continued to Geysir area and mighty Gullfoss, the Golden Waterfall.
It was such a wonderful sunny day! My pictures tell you more then my words, just follow the photography to have more insight :) We came back from that trip at night. I was so enthusiastic about Gullfoss and its beautiful frozen cascades! Enjoy it :)))))

Last Sunday of February (Feb 23rd) was incredibly fantastic adventurous day!!! I still can’t believe that we managed to see so many beautiful places only in one day having such a splendid weather in wintertime! My Polish colleague proposed me to go for a glacier walk to Sólheimajökull as they were looking for the fourth person to join them at the car trip. This beautiful glacier is situated about 200 km to south from Reykjavik. And our common Polish friend (that is a glacier guide at Sólheimajökulll) promised to guide us on the glacier. And it was exactly the main purpose of the one-day trip.

We started the journey quite early on Sunday morning in order to see more interesting places on the way. We headed south taking the ring road no 1 (you should know that is the only highway here in Iceland and depending on the weather conditions the highest speed could be only 30-90 km per hour). And the weather was amazing: sunny, almost no wind and intensively blue sky. It felt completely like during summertime. Just look at the pictures! Amazing landscapes made me completely out of breath when we were passing by Skálafell because the climate shifted immediately to winter changing completely from mild climate of Reykjavik to severe and windy snowy winter land. And then again resembling the spring time while we were going closer to Selfoss.
We made a short stop at Selfoss just to buy some stuff to eat and I took my chance to try out my Icelandic skills at the local bakery shop. Yes, I was successful to buy myself a sandwich in Icelandic. Every time I’m communicating in Icelandic I am very happy because it’s completely new experience to me, and it’s not easy at all.

So we continued our trip until Seljandsfoss (the waterfall that you approach also from ‘behind’). There was wonderful entire rainbow arc over the waterfall so it looked really fabulous. Than another short stop before Skógar because boys wanted to try out some rocks for climbing. So we just parked the car in the middle of nowhere in a place sheltered from the wind by some fantasy rocks and sunbathing for a while while one of the Polish guys were trying to climb the rock.

Later on we visited for a moment the mighty and beautiful Skógarfoss (I was camping in Skógar with my friends last July and I love this place). As the day was so pleasant and sunny there was a nice rainbow over the waterfall. It's quite common here to spot this colourful arc here in Iceland while it's good light and humidity :)

Then we went to see the old 'crashed' airplane on the black beach several kilometres before Vík í Mýrdal. It's called Sólheimasandur’s black sandy beach. In fact it was a forced landing in the 70-ties. Wonderful place! I took like hundreds of pictures there. I wish I could show you more images here. But you can always ask me and I give you a link with more photos from this trip. Just send your request! :) And the detailed info how to find that crash site can be found here.

On the Saturday of Nov 24, 1973 a U.S. Navy airplane (C-47 SkyTrain also known as “Dakota”) was forced to land on Sólheimasandur’s black sandy beach in the south of Iceland. The crew survived the landing and the airplane’s remains are still standing at the crash site. The black sand makes the wreckage scene look very dramatic like it was taken out of some apocalyptic zombie movie.

And just after having fun at the crashed plane site we went closer to the ocean and while playing with big waves coming towards us, one by one in a nice pace, suddenly we spotted a whale swimming along the seashore! We saw a huge fountain of water coming out of the blue first and birds flying above that area. The whale appeared several times, it was black and white, we saw its tale and a dorsal fin. Probably it was a minkie whale, quite common in Iceland. Amazing one! It was such a pleasure to watch it playing in the ocean on such a beautiful sunny day!

SO BEAUTIFUL!!!!!!!!!!!!!

SUCH AN AMAZING CREATURE!!! :))))))))))))

And now it's time to go for the main attraction of the day, BLUE GLACIER WALK at Sólheimajökull. We had a wonderful guide, our Polish friend, who grew up in the States, and works as a glacier guide at Sólheimajökull (you coulld read about him in last issue of 'Polityka' weekly magazin).
I was totally amazed with the walk on blue glacier, what a beautiful adventure! Awesome!!! It took us about 3 hours to enjoy the walk on blue glacier. We were coming down the slope just after the sunset, so it became dark during our way back. I was trying to convince myself that I don't need to be worry about walking down such an icy hill in the darkness. Spikes helped us a lot.
In fact it was the first walk on a glacier in my life! And for the first time I used spikes and an ice-axe and I always wanted to try it out!! Felt so good :)) WALKING ON THE BLUE ICE!!!!! JUST LIKE IN MY BLUE DREAM :)))

Sólheimajökull Glacier
Sólheimajökull glacier is an approximately 11-km-long outlet glacier, which advances from Mýrdalsjökull glacier, down a one to two km wide valley. The glacier falls from a height of about 1,300 m down to 100 m and, because of the location and shape of the glacier, it is sensitive to climate change. In the lowlands the climate is warm and humid with average temperatures above 5°C and precipitation of 1,810 mm per year. Precipitation on Mýrdalsjökull glacier, however, is much higher, or up to 7,000 mm per year, and the average temperature is much lower.

And on our way back beautiful and enormous green aurora was following us back to Reykjavik. The wind became strong and chilling whispering 'good night my beautiful world!'.

Domi in Ice-wonder-land

Sunday, 16 March 2014

Magic of frozen Gullfoss. Golden circle in wintertime :)

Monday, 3 March 2014

Glacier walk at Sólheimajökull: Blue ice, happy whales and rainbows story :)