Mother Nature's Mic Drop

the most colorful tour thus far (Iceland Part 4)

An apt description of everything we saw today.

Day 4 (Thursday)

Note: This one is also best viewed in the Substack app or on a browser, as it has too many photos/videos to fit in your email inbox.

After a quick breakfast at the hotel, we were picked up by a shuttle to begin our tour of Iceland’s renowned Golden Circle. We spent the first 30 minutes driving around Reykjavik to pick up all of the other members of the group (including an obnoxious woman, Elizabeth from Milwaukee, whose presence and behavior encouraged us to keep insisting we were Canadian instead of American, lest we be mistakenly lumped together), while getting to know our driver and guide, Hilmar.

Side note: On the other tours we’d been on thus far, we learned a fun fact here and there, but were mostly left to stare out the window and marvel at the beautiful landscapes passing by. Hilmar, however, was chatty, knowledgeable, interesting, and funny. He’s the 32nd generation of the first settlers of Iceland, with over 1200 years of family history on the island. Because Iceland is so sparsely populated, and so far from other geographic regions, it’s easy to trace native family lineages back to the original Vikings (and there’s a whole family tree of the nation that exists online).

The Golden Circle tour started by bringing us back to Þingvellir National Park, which I forgot to previously mention is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, where Iceland’s first parliament was founded in 930 CE. From an overlook by a visitor center, we pointed out to the Chasins where we had snorkeled earlier in the week, and then ventured down to the flag that marks the area in which parliament members would gather to make important decisions.

“oooh, ahhhh” — said nobody ever about this parliament spot.

Fun fact: When the parliament was originally developed, nobody knew how to read or write, so there was one guy who kept track of all the laws they decided to uphold. That one guy would then have to verbally announce all those laws to all the townsfolk in the town square. His title was Speaker of the Law and he was the only elected official in all of Iceland. Apparently, he would face a wall and yell the laws aloud toward the wall, which would then echo them loud enough for all townspeople to hear. Some of the laws were pretty ridiculous, likely making them easier to remember: one of the laws forbade playing chess in front of the parliament building on Sundays — a law that is now in writing and remains true.

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Maybe there are some stupid questions

The next stop was at the Geysir Geothermal Area, where the dormant Geysir is overshadowed by the active Strokkur geyser, which shoots water 25 meters high every 10 or so minutes. We all got a kick out of watching other people film the spectacular eruption, but our annoyance with Elizabeth and her ridiculous questions¹ was the first indicator that the hanger was about to strike. While Dave wandered around to see more bubbling pools of sulfuric water, the rest of us went inside to grab lunch in the enormous gift shop and cafeteria.

The seating area was lined with televisions, all playing the same short documentary-like reel about Icelandic/Nordic wrestling (Glíma), wherein both participants don a harness-like belt and grab at each others’ in order to lift the other person off the ground and slam them back down in acrobatic fashion. This is, apparently, the most popular sport in Iceland, and I could have watched these videos for hours:

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Don’t stick to the rivers and the lakes that you’re used to

After lunch, we ventured to the final stop on the Golden Circle tour: Gullfoss, Iceland’s most famous waterfall. Per usual, it was incredibly windy and cold, but an absolutely stunning view:

Cuties, I know.

If you’re doing the Golden Circle tour as a day trip, you’d likely head back to Reykjavik after seeing Gullfoss. However, we were headed to Kirkjubaejarklaustur on the South Coast for a couple nights, and along the way we stopped at the Seljalandsfoss waterfall. Dave and I were itching to get a little exercise after spending so much time driving around, and Mike joined us in traversing the trail to get the backside of the waterfall. By the time we made it to the other side and across the bridge to get back to the shuttle, we were pretty drenched by the mist emanating from the falls, but it did make for some beautiful photos:

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The South Coast

Kirkjubæjarklaustur is a sleepy little rural town far away from city lights, making it a prime spot to see the Northern Lights. After the letdown the night prior, and despite our desperate need for sleep, we all decided we would make an effort to stay up long enough to see them if they showed up. Dave was smart enough to stay in cozy warmth of our room after dinner until the rest of us spotted something, but the rest of us craned our necks to stare at the sky in the freezing wind for what felt like (and may have been) several hours. Slowly, the population of those standing and staring began to dwindle, and as each weary traveler meandered past us back to their rooms, we let them know that we would howl like wolves if we saw something (our version of an alarm bell).

While waiting patiently for mother nature to work her magic and shift the cloud coverage away from the night sky above us, we befriended a couple people from Bavaria who had a sweet DSLR setup and a much greater knowledge and understanding about what we were looking for in the sky as the first signs of the aurora borealis. For the longest time, our eyes kept playing tricks on us – every cloud movement, every wisp or slight deviation in sky color caught our attention, but none were the Northern Lights.

Nothing to see here…

Until suddenly, a faint greenish hue appeared above us, first spotted by Stacey and corroborated as Northern Lights by the 3 second exposure of multiple cell phones.²

Shhh, quiet down, the show is starting.

I started howling, and then the remaining stargazers joined in. We sent a text to Dave to urge him to come outside, and we didn’t stop howling until a large crowd had formed right as the show was about to start:

We tried to capture the movement, but it changes so rapidly!

Pictures don't do this justice at all

Our selfie game was strong

It felt really bizarre to have a phone/camera out the entire time. In most cases, that would detract from remaining present in life’s formative experiences. But a phone/camera is [almost] a necessary companion in order to truly experience the abundant beauty of the Aurora Borealis. After about an hour, though, the lights faded into darkness and it was time to hit the hay.

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Day 1: Iceland: A Land of Fire and Ice

Day 2: Our Only Regret is Not Drinking More

Day 3: Aurora Boring-alis

1. “Remind me again where we shouldn’t stand near the geyser?” In the pathway of the hot steam, Elizabeth.

2. A lot of the fainter Northern Lights can’t be seen clearly with the naked eye, but our phones and cameras do an excellent job of capturing them!