Monday, August 22, 2011

I totally forgot to mention that we went into Halifax on our layover yesterday! We had almost 5 hours to kill there, so we decided to take a taxi into the city because I haven’t been there in a long time and Darren has never been there. We had a friendly cab driver who dropped us off on the wharf where we walked around for an hour or so. There was this cute little pub place with live music, right on the water where we attempted to have dinner. The only problem was that there weren’t any tables free and the dude at the bar didn’t really want to serve us dinner. So, as there was a slight time crunch in order to make it back to the airport to check in, after Darren had a beer, we decided on COWS icecream – as that is also a unique maritime experience! It was good, as always!! However, back at the airport, we did find a great seafood place where I managed to have the most amazing clam chowder for dinner! Yeah!
We both had a great sleep last night…11h straight! After waking up and attempting to call baggage services again, we decided to go straight to the Reykjavik bus station to get our bags…they weren’t there! Because we wanted to tour out of the city today, we decided to take the hour to drive back to the airport to get our bags from there…and guess what? They weren’t there either! After finally tracking down someone within the baggage services area she told me that they were never supposed to arrive this morning and that of course they would be arriving tomorrow morning! (Like, duh?! Why would I have thought they’d be arriving today?!) So I demanded some form of compensation and received 100$/person. You’d think that they would hand out more money for lost + delayed bags than what they’d save on fuel by leaving them in Halifax! Anyway, at least that made me feel better about the whole thing.
Due to the slight change of plans, we decided to work on the closest part of the “Golden Circle” today. Unfortunately, the highway starts at Reykjavik, so we headed back up Highway 41 (Which Darren must be able to do with his eyes closed by this point!) before starting South on the main road #1. We drove through the fog and the rain for a while…the moss-covered lava is called Kristnitökuhraun here…before passing through the town of Hellisheidi where there are a lot of greenhouses because of all of the geothermal energy. We arrived at the town of Selfoss and decided to go for a little walk. We passed a church and noticed that down by the river there was steam rising up from the bank! After trudging through some knee-high, wet grass, we discovered three miniature geysers (ie hot water coming up from the ground through a pipe)…but the water was really warm, which was awesome!
We then headed down to the coast to a little fishing town called Stokkseyri where we looked at the ocean (it was very cold out today and I am a wimp!) and scared away some beautiful swans! It took a few minutes to drive through the rest of the town before we decided that we needed food and decided to head up to Pingvellir National Park.
En route Darren spotted “Elf Houses”…approximately ½ of the Icelandic population believes in trolls and elves! Someone or something has put houses on the side of the rocks that were laying in a field! It was cool to see!! 
I saw a fissure right before the tourist info centre and made Darren walk back to take pictures! There was no one around, so that was nice. Turns out it was just a secondary fissure called Peningagja that the Danish King Frederick VIII visited in 1907. We drove into the close end of the park and walked up to the actual continental divide. The Eurasian and North American tectonic plates are moving apart at approximately 2cm per year. The North American side has a huge rock wall which was used as an amphitheatre in 930AD when the early settlers started parliament…which was the first one established in the world.
About half way down the wall, there is a cute waterfall, called Oxarafoss, from the River Oxara. It was cool, because it fell between the two plates and was very un-touristy today…so we got some good pictures! The waterfall leads to the “Drowning pool”, were women who committed infanticide, perjury, and adultery in the 16th century.
After walking the 1.7km length of the divide, we walked down in the valley, where the Pingvallabaer Farmhouse and Pingvallakirkja church are located. The church was the first to be consecrated in Iceland. The pulpit is from 1683. The three bells are from three different eras: Middle ages, 1698, and 1944 when Iceland got its independence (Islandsklukkan). The farmhouse is the summer residence of the Prime Minister.
We made it back to Reykjavik and took three tries to locate white gas for our camping stove (it is a popular item) before finding groceries for dinner and checking into our HI hostel. Ironically, the hostel is located at the same site as where we were supposed to be camping last night! We were lucky to get in, however, as the hostel is completely booked tonight!
Currently, we are sitting in on a Volcano lecture that is being presented by a professor at the University here! It is really interesting to learn…there are 30 active volcanoes in Iceland! They take turns erupting and currently there are four that are most active, Krafla, Hekla, Grimsvotn, and Katla. The most feared is Katla because it lies under the Vatnajokull glacier and causes big floods when it erupts.
Now, we’ve been learning the different methods of measuring volcanic activity! They use this old method called the “tilt” method, where they measure the change in tilt of tipi-shaped sticks. Currently, Hekla should be ready to erupt based on this method, as it has a tendency to erupt every ten years. They also use seismic measurements, and GPS methods. Kind of cool. We’ve also learned that there was an earthquake here today! We didn’t feel anything…but it is kinda cool to know that we were here for one!
Enough learning for today!
Later
-AJ