Alright, here’s the scoop. I’m in Iceland. And I’m writing this post as a draft. This means I’m writing it installments and saving my progress in between for those of you who don’t know. I don’t typically do this, but I feel more ambitious about writing in my blog lately. Where will I be when I’m done? Who knows. Will I proofread what I have written after and try to make it sound meshed together better? No.

Anyway, the title of the post is a quote from a song by the band Foreigner. The song being of course, Cold As Ice. It has been stuck in my head the whole time I’ve been in Iceland and I’d really appreciate if you could listen to the song while reading this. Wait for my queue to start playing it though. I’m going to write this post so that the amount of time it takes you to read it, is the exact length of the song. If you finish the reading before the song ends, congratulations. You are an above-average reader. If the song finishes before you finish reading, you are mentally retarded. Sorry.

Start the song… NOW!

I arrived in Reykjavik – the capital of Iceland – on Oct 8th at about 10:30pm, in Icelandic time. This was disappointing because I wanted to see the landscape from the sky. I hope it is clear on my return flight as I will be leaving in the morning. Anyway, Reykjavik is awesome. It’s strange, because in the city itself, there isn’t that much to do. Sure there are a few museums, but I’m not a big museum guy. It’s a small city as well, only ~180,000 people. This is more than half the population of Iceland however. I do like small cities though. I like being able to walk every where. The houses look a little different than any where else. Usually they have tin siding and roofing. Tin buildings sound horrible looking I understand, like a shed or a barn of some kind. But the style of the tin they us is actually quite nice looking, and since pretty every house you see has tin on it, it’s not weird. Lots of the houses are even all black, which is I think looks really awesome. Speaking of which, I heard a rumor from a few Icelanders that Björk has a house in Reykavik that she recently painted all black… including the glass of the windows, so you can’t see in or out. Björk is a weird person, but I’d like to find this house and take pictures of it and hopefully weird her out more. I did search for it where I was told it roughly was, but couldn’t find it.

Enough about Björk and her weirdness. I feel ending the subject requires a new paragraph entirely. Icelanders remind me Norwegians. They are really friendly and it is easy to initiate a conversation any where. This is great for a person traveling alone. Especially in the low-season (i.e.: right now). I can easily go to the bar alone and some random Icelander(s) will have a conversation with me. Speaking of the bar, they are like Norwegians in that matter as well. Liquor is cheap in the liquor store – because they are controlled by the government – but liquor is expensive at the bar. So; likewise in Norway, they don’t go to the bar until 1 or 2am. And they usually only go on Friday and Saturday, as they are apparently hard workers during the work week. I’d imagine Thursday is popular for uni students in Reykjavik, but I didn’t go out Thursday. However good I think Reykjavik is, any Icelander will tell you that Iceland is all about the countryside. So you have to get out of Reykjavik.

I did leave Reykjavik of course. It is quite easy to, there are so many excursions from the capital. Even in the low-season and even more in the high-season. First off, I went to the Blue Lagoon. Which is completely incredible looking. I understand there are lots of places in Iceland that look similar to the Blue Lagoon, but apparently the Blue Lagoon has certain bacterias and other minerals in the water that other similar looking places do not. Check out the picture near this paragraph to see what I’m talking about. I don’t know if the photo captures how cool it truly is, but it will have to do. I mean, unless you actually go to Iceland and check it out yourself. I’d recommend it.

I also did a tour of The Golden Circle as it is called. It’s probably the most popular tourist route in Iceland. The main sights you see are The Golden Falls, Geysir (where all geysirs got there name from), where Iceland is breaking apart, and many other really great sights. The tour was pretty good I thought. The scenery was epic, there was tons of info from the guide, but my guide was really boring. I mean, she tried to make a couple of jokes, but her stories were like reading a history book. It’s all really interesting, but the presentation just isn’t riveting. I suppose it is hit or miss with the guides. I’m not dissatisfied with the tour and I’d say check it out for sure. Unless you feel like renting a car and just driving to the spots.

Whale watching was a bit disappointing. Perhaps I’m a bit jaded. When I was in the Dominican Republic last, I went deep sea fishing and it happened to be hump back whale mating season. Apparently, the Domincan is where they go to do this. So we must have saw 20 to 25 hump backs. On the whale watching tour I went on we saw 5 minke whales. They did keep resurfacing and one was really near the boat, maybe 10m away. So that was cool. Really hard to get a picture of, because you don’t know exactly where they are going to come, they surface only briefly and you aren’t really watching if you are playing with your camera. We also saw some dolphins about 150m away, and it was nearly impossible to see anything more than splashes. But a whale watching tour is very hit or miss. They can’t make whales swim near the boat. So I forgive them. Plus, it was pretty cheap to go anyway.

The last tour I did out of Reykjavik was supposed to be just a tour of a lava cave. Being the low-season, I went later in the day to the place where you book tours and asked what other people have booked, because you need a minimum of two people to go on most of the tours. And I’m clearly only one person. Turns out a group of three book a tour of a lava cave. It sounded cool, so I paid for the same tour. The touring company phoned me an hour later and told me there has been a mistake and the group changed their mind. They wanted to go into the lava cave, but as well go snorkeling in Silfra, which is where Iceland is breaking apart. The water comes off a glacier and is filtered through volcanic rock and other fun geological stuff that I don’t undestand. Anyway, this results in the water being incredibly clear. You can see for 100m underwater. The water coming from the glacier also results in the water being +2°C at all times. Fortunately we had dry suits on for this, but, as I found out, no dry suit is ever 100% dry. Fortunately the suit you wear underneath absorbs the water and when your body warms that water, it’s like another layer of insulation. The dry suits also make you float. So basically anyone can do it. All you have to be able to do really is kick your feet and breath through your mouth. And there is a slight current that pushes along the way, so you barely have to swim. I’d highly recommend going snorkeling. It was so incredible. Also, the lava cave was really awesome. Very short, but I’ve never seen anything like it before, so it amazed me.

Alright, most of the stuff I mentioned wasn’t in Reykavik. What did I do there, you ask? I searched for Björk’s house, walked around… a lot, went out to some bars, and ate whale and puffin. I know you want to hear about how whale tasted, but I’m going to start with puffin. I had smoked puffin, which didn’t really taste that great. Sort of just like any kind of random smoked meat. It had a weird consistancy and was really dark. I didn’t like it very much, but the mustard dip they provided with it was great. First off, don’t give me crap for eating whale. Whale was actually pretty good. I think I had minke whale. It basically looked like a beef steak. But it was in small chunks because I got it on a skewer. To be honest, it pretty much tasted like beef. The only differences I could find was that it didn’t really have a grain like you’d see in a beef steak, making it harder to cut than beef. And, it had a slight fishy taste. I imagine this is from being in the ocean. I also ate it with mustard. The mustard they have in Iceland is different than our typical crappy yellow French’s mustard. It actually tastes good. Speaking of mustard, I’ve also been eating lots of hot dogs. Apparently hot dogs are really popular in Iceland. There is an old hot dog stand in Reykjavik that has been opened since 1919. I was told to try a hot dog when I got to Iceland and I thought that was stupid, because you can get hot dogs anywhere in the word really. But they really are better here. I was really surprised. I strongly suggest eating hot dogs when in Iceland.

I’m also drove around Iceland. I decied to go clockwise due to a lot of mountain roads being in the North. I figured they might be more difficult to traverse and if I got them out of the way first, I could see how much time I had left to get back to the airport down the South. I actually didn’t have any problems with the roads in the North. I thought they’d be a lot more difficult. I mainly stuck to highway 1. This is Iceland’s main road that basically goes around the coast. I feel the more difficult roads the ones along the East coast, but I could see how the roads could get a lot worse in the North later in the winter. Probably all the roads would be a lot worse in winter actually. But that’s pretty obvious.

My basic Itinerary

Day 1. Reykjavik to Akureyri.
Day 2. Akureyri to Seyðisfjörður.
Day 3. Seyðisfjörður to Vagnsstaðir. This was the most difficult part of the drive.
Day 4. Vagnsstaðir to Vik.
Day 5. Vik to Skógar. Walked on the glacier, then back to Vik.
Day 6. Vik to Njarðvik.
Day 7. Around the peninsula and back to Njarðvik.

I can’t really describe the stops I made. I just kind of pulled over at picnic areas or at other marked points of interest or really whenever I saw something that looked cool. I can say the landscape changed pretty frequently and into types of landscape I’ve never or rarely seen before. Glaciers, lake filled with icebergs, lava fields, areas with geothermal activity (steam coming out of holes in the ground and/or geysirs), black sand fields, and black sand beaches. I’m sure my descriptions here are not adequate, but, I assure you, the landscape is amazing. You rarely see forests and the villages are very small. Like I said, over half the populate lives in Reykjavik leaving the rest – about 120,000 – in an area about as big as Great Britian. I would like to repeat that you should definitely get out of Reykjavik. I’m sure I could have driven around Iceland in 4 days, but I’m glad I had 7. I could probably have done with more days because I missed some stops and drove more than I wanted to some times. But I kind of just winged it. I had a map and a car and just drove. Picked a town each morning to drive to and just went there. If there was a hostel in the town and it was opened, I’d stay. Otherwise, I’d just go some where else.

I’d like to conclude by saying I ate 21 hot dogs in 5 days. And also, go to Iceland.