Sun Voyages and Silica

On my very last day in Iceland, I’d booked myself into the Blue Lagoon. Last time I visited, I didn’t get a chance to go, and even though it’s insanely expensive, it felt like one of the things you have to experience at least once. The Blue Lagoon is located pretty near to the airport, so it makes a kind of sense to go there when first arriving or departing from Iceland (sense in that you can’t then get a return on your original transfer but if you’re in Iceland and on a budget, you’re already broke by this point anyhow!)

Annoyingly you can’t buy both the journey and the entrance to the Lagoon together, and it takes a bit of faffing about online to work out precisely what you need to do. The Blue Lagoon is about an hour from Reykjavik and about 20 minutes from the airport so book your entrance time accordingly. I wasn’t sure how long would be a good amount of time in the Lagoon: I checked a few forums and some said 2 hours and some said 4. Since I was solo I wasn’t certain I could keep myself entertained there for four whole hours, but I was a bit worried that it might take forever to change and find the bus, so I compromised and gave myself 3 hours. This meant catching the bus at midday which gave me some time in the morning to search for another sunrise and have some comfortable time to pack.

I went on a 9am walk along the waterfront (which is still night time in November in Iceland) and caught the sunrise over the sun voyager. Unfortunately a bus load of tourists (okay, other tourists) turned up around then too so my best photos are before sunrise when there are less people! I got back just in time to make sure everything was charged, pack everything and be at the bus stop in time for my pick-up. The thing about the pick-ups in Reykjavik (and this one is worth being aware of) is that you actually have to be at the bus stop at least half hour before your pick-up time, as the same bus will normally be getting lots of people from loads of different stops around the city. Mine came soon after I got to the stop, but then took me to the central bus station (15 minutes walk away) where I had to get off and wait for another bus which took me and the others to the Blue Lagoon.

I’ve got to say, it’s pretty cool when you get off the bus, walk up the path and see the blue waters (from the sulphur and silica minerals). I took some photos then and there, and then walked inside and saw the massive queue to actually get in and wondered if I’d made a mistake not waiting until after my trip! I don’t even think I was there during peak times, but the queue was right to the door. It moved fairly fast though and I think I was in in about 20 minutes. They provide lockers and shoe racks and even towels (although be warned, there is literally no way of differentiating which towel is yours – I thought I was clever and hung mine in a very specific and easily memorable spot so I’d know it was mine – it was gone by the time I got back and I had to steal one from nearby). Also be warned: you must shower naked before you get in the lagoon – the changing and shower areas are divided by gender and there are cubicles for this (or, I can vouch that there are in the women’s at least!) but surprisingly few people bothered shutting the door of the cubicle.

Anyway, eventually I am all swim-suited up, wrapped in my towel and outside I pop for my once in a lifetime experience and DEAR LORD IS IT COLD. It’s -2* (and my phone tells me it’s ‘real feel’  -7* degrees) and here I am scuttling around in a bikini! Well, I got into those waters as fast as possible, but in all honestly, it wasn’t as warm as I was expecting in there, and the temperature isn’t incredibly consistent throughout either. The Blue Lagoon is not a natural wonder. Sorry if you didn’t know that and I’ve destroyed your dreams but they feed the water through from the power plant next door and, in the pool, there are these giant sections with, like wood panelling on them which you can use as a bar to rest your drink on, that I think the water must come out of. The water is warmest near those anyhow! It came up to about chest height, maybe slightly lower, which I think would have been lovely in slightly warmer weather but was honestly just a bit cold in November. I found myself crouching beneath the water to stay warm, and I tend to like my baths/showers scalding so I found the lagoon on the cool side. There also aren’t any (official) seating areas in the water but there is a bar, and you get a free drink included in the entrance fee. I went for a smoothie but there were lots of alcoholic options too. There’s also a tap with drinking water and you’re allowed to bring water bottles in so I stayed super hydrated at least.

There are some decorated rocks around, and in a section of the pool behind the water fountain, there are some of these decorative rocks next to one of the planked areas that pump out the hot water. There is one cranny in the rocks that is perfect for small (okay, medium) Brummie girls to sit in and stay toasty warm whilst resting their free smoothie on the planky bits. I spent a lot of my time there. Be warned:  if you track that spot down- it’s very very warm. Between refilling my water bottle, dominating the best spot and asking unsuspecting strangers to take photos of me covered in the free silica mud masks, I happily filled the time until I needed to get out and get ready to go to the airport.

I didn’t notice until long after I’d packed up my swimsuit in one of my airport liquid bags that they actually do provide small bags for you to put your wet costume in. I did a rare thing of blow-drying my hair too (normally I leave it to dry naturally but I thought that might be borderline masochistic with the air temperature outside), and then went outside to wait for my bus. It was bloody cold. Even with my crazy but dry hair (I’m not very neat with a hairdryer) it was really cold and I was glad I’d already taken photos of the lagoon as I was free to get on my bus as soon as it arrived.

Back to the airport and back on a plane for this Brummie to the (very slightly) warmer lands of Great Britain.

Elf Rocks and Ice Caves

After another bad night’s sleep (not the room, just me for some reason), I fill one of my liquid bags with muffins and the day’s lunch, at the hostel breakfast buffet. Today is my Reykjavik day. I love having at least one solid day on a trip to explore the city I’m in: this usually involves a walking tour, climbing some sort of church tower for a birds’ eye view and a bit of tat shopping. Today was no different, and I was booked onto my free walking tour at 10:30am. I’d gotten up early to see if I could catch the sunrise over the mountains – I’d been on a minibus tour yesterday at this point, but it had looked incredible.

Before heading out, I went to my room to wrap up warm, and shared a muffin with my last remaining dorm mate – a girl from Taiwan who’s name I never learnt, but who might well be my favourite person I’ve met in a hostel so far – and then headed out into the cold air. It had snowed during the night and I found myself padding around in soft snow – it was beautiful and stunning and felt like Christmas. I took a lot of unnecessary photos of snow covered trees before I wandered along to my walking tour meet-up spot.

The tour was a few hours long, and we were given the ‘Winter Version’ which included a few stops indoors to warm up. As far as I could tell I was the only person on this tour alone. Although I’ve read so many things saying Iceland is great for solo travellers, I haven’t run into many of us out and about in the country yet to be honest. Anyway, we walked around the city, past the City Hall and beautiful Tjörnin lake, the Hallgrimskirkja, which I remember from my last visit, the parliament building, an elf stone and several other points of interest. The tour guide was a post-graduate student at the local university and, although he was knowledgeable and the tour was fine, it was amongst the middle of the rankings in terms of walking tours I’ve been on.

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After the tour I climbed Hallgrimskirkja for that promised birds’ eye view over Iceland. I wanted to see the coloured houses but actually, the snow ruined that effect but did allow me a stunning snowscape instead. It was only about 1pm by this point, so I went back to my hostel to eat my packed lunch (it was far too cold outside) and booked myself onto the Perlan Museums’ tour of the first indoor ice cave for that afternoon. I’ve got to say, this is where my hostel really came into it’s own. I’d read that there was a free shuttle bus from the Harpa Concert Hall, (2 minutes’ walk away), to the Perlan Museum, (half an hour’s walk away), but couldn’t work out where the stop was. I asked about this at the hostel desk and the lady there phoned the Concert Hall for me and asked where the stop was.

My Perlan ticket was the equivalent of about £20, but this was far, far less expensive than going to an actual ice cave so I thought it was a brilliant compromise. I arrived there just after three and the was sent through an exhibit before the ice cave tour. The exhibit was interesting enough, but you could only spend as long as it took for the next tour to start in there. The tour itself lasted about 15 minutes, and was less interesting than I was expecting. It mimicked features of a real ice cave in too neat an order, like an exhibition, but it never really felt like a real ice cave (I would assume, never having actually been to one). Still, for a tenth of the price I can’t complain. And the ticket also grants you access to the 360* viewing deck on top of the museum. It was cold and the sun was setting when I was up there (queue pretty sunset shots), so I was pretty happy to head back into the city centre for dinner and tat browsing during my evening and a nice scalding hot shower. Yum.

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I was joined by four more people in my dorm room that evening, most of whom were there for the Music Festival. Because the accommodation booked up so quickly for the festival, I had the strong feeling that my new roommates’ first choice of place to stay would not have been a hostel dorm room. There were two girls from Holland who came together who were polite enough, but not overly friendly, and I felt a bit like I was invading their private room – something I’ve never felt in a hostel before. Luckily, my Taiwanese pal had given me some free beer tokens for Icelandic Craft Bar (the bar owned by Icelandic Street Food) before she’d checked out and so I did another ‘First’ for me on a solo trip: I took myself to a bar on my own (and obviously got more soup and free cakes) and drank. A pretty nice and cosy way to spend my last evening in the land of Ice and Fire thank you very much.

Tour Guides and Taxi Rides

With how tired I was on the bus last night, I’d presumed I’d fall asleep straight away and have a solid night’s sleep. I actually really struggled in my hostel bed for some reason, waking several times during the night. I had to get up early for a full day tour I’d booked so I crawled out of bed, exhausted, at about 7am to shower. When I came back into the room some of my other dorm-mates were awake but still bleary-eyed, but one of them immediately asked me how the Northern Lights were. I was kind of impressed by her logic to be honest – I’d never even seen her before that conversation, but she knew where I’d been and was friendly enough to ask first thing in the morning. I had a quick chat about it being a bit underwhelming and then headed upstairs to breakfast. As forward as it was, it was so nice to be in a hostel where people were so friendly again!

Normally I don’t book a hostel breakfast as my favourite thing is brunching in new cities, but Reykjavik was far far too expensive to eat that many meals out, and I needed to eat and get to the bus stop before 8am for my tour. The breakfast was laid out buffet style and I had thought ahead and grabbed some airport liquid bags for precisely this reason. If I am paying the equivalent of £11 for a meal that I would normally skip altogether in my everyday life (I know, terrible habit!), I will be hoarding some of it away for lunch, thank you very much. Yes, I am stingy and awkward, but I’m going to be honest – I did this all three days and have absolutely no regrets!

The breakfast was fine, it was a cold buffet with a few cereal options, a few fruit options and some bagels with vegetarian options. The one thing that made it amazing was these mini muffins, that were marbled chocolate and vanilla with a white chocolate ganache in the centre. I don’t want to admit to precisely how many of those I snaffled into airport liquid bags over the next two mornings (I didn’t try them until lunchtime on the first day so didn’t realise how amazing it would be) but let’s just say that I took enough to still have some in my Cambridge freezer 3 weeks after my trip. Again, no regrets.

I rushed out to the bus stop around the corner to be there on time to be picked up for my tour. I was booked onto the Black and Blue tour through Arctic Adventures, which consisted of a morning within lava caves and the afternoon snorkelling in the fissure between two tectonic plates.

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We were picked up in a mini bus and taken on a stunning journey (the sun was slowly rising on my first ever clear day in Iceland) and taken to these lava fields a short drive out of town. We arrived as the sun was climbing over the snow-capped mountains and enjoyed the view for a while before heading into the cave. Our guide told us it was named ‘The End of the Road’, after the remains of a lamb that are well preserved in the far end of the cave. It was a really fun trip, although I wouldn’t recommend if you’re severely claustrophobic – I found it utterly fine but if you don’t like having no visible exit and low ceilings then you might struggle. The guides were very knowledgeable and friendly and pointed out all of the interesting features in the cave, formed by lava funnelling through the ground after multiple eruptions from nearby volcanoes. At one point we all turned our headlights out to experience complete darkness and the guides explained how our brain will conjure outlines that aren’t there, to make us think we’re not completely blind when we are.

We then went through a second part of the cave where the ceiling got even lower, and at one point we had to log-roll through it. Okay, well, the guide did give us the option of an army crawl, but the rocky ground was a bit painful on my hands through my (thermal but thin) gloves and so I ended up just rolling like a toddler down a hill. People laughed at first but then followed suit. No regrets here either, it really was the best option.

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Following the lava caving part of our tour, we got dropped off at what looked like an industrial estate for lunch, and told we’d be picked up in 45 minutes for the next half of our tour. I ate my bagel I’d packed from breakfast, and had my life changed by those muffins, and went to the meet-up spot to be picked up.  An hour later, we were still there, and I called the tour operator. It sounds like the information had been confused and although pick-up started an hour ago, but we should allow the full hour for pick-up. It sounded a bit shifty in all honesty, but at least we had confirmation that they were definitely coming! Soon a minibus taxi arrived for us, waving a sign for the snorkelling trip. It turns out that for some reason the regular driver was held up so this taxi driver sometimes filled in instead. To be honest, he was utterly fantastic. He made me sit in the front because I was ‘single’ as he called it, which gave me the best view and the most room out of everyone in that mini bus, and he told us all about the history of Iceland on the way. I don’t know if this would have happened on the normal tour but it was utterly endearing and I decided I very much liked having him as a guide.

I liked my snorkelling guide a lot less.

It was fun getting geared up (they give you a thermal suit and a dry suit) and the location was really stunning. There were 11 of us, however, and there was a tour guide that I’d been speaking to as I geared up and got on really well with, and a tour guide who I was stood near when he said ‘Okay, you six will be my group’. In all honesty, I felt it even the: I wanted to be in the other group and as a ‘single’ I could easily have gone over, I’m sure, but I’m far too British to have asked.

My tour guide, I think his name was Alex,  was, I’m sure, very nice and very knowledgeable but I wouldn’t know as he spent 90% of the tour speaking Spanish. There were three Spanish women in the group, plus me and a couple from the Philippines so, out of the two languages he spoke, his audience were an equal split. He said because the ladies  were Spanish he’d speak Spanish 50% of the time and English 50%. This was absolutely not even slightly the case. I actually speak some Spanish, and I know the language is far more efficient than English but it literally was 90% Spanish. It wasn’t even that he wasn’t speaking our language, it was that he clearly loved the opportunity to speak to the Spanish women and therefore the three of us who weren’t Spanish got utterly neglected doing something that’s potentially quite dangerous and can be alarming. I made friends with the couple and know that the girl got really upset at one point because she’d had to take her glasses off for snorkelling and got a migraine on the route round and desperately wanted to get out of the water.  It took about 15 minutes to even get the tour guide’s attention. I kept getting water in my mask and couldn’t get his attention at all (we’d been told not to touch our masks because there was a special way of getting them on) so kept inhaling water every 30 seconds which wasn’t especially pleasant. Anyway, sorry to go on a rant about my guide – I just honestly think I’d have had a much, much nicer experience with the guide who had bothred learning my name rather than calling me ‘English Girl’ the four times he spoke to me. I don’t mean to take this so personally but with Brexit happening at the moment, it’s hard to tell if that’s just a way of distinguishing me or an actual dig at me for the way the other 51% of my nation voted.

Anyway, we were at Silfra Fissure, at Thingvellir National Park and the setting was honestly beautiful. The snorkelling experience, tour-guide aside was really wonderful. When you first get into the water, lie on your stomach and look down, it can be quite alarming. Although I knew we were in the gap between two continents and I knew that I couldn’t sink with my dry-suit on, I just wasn’t expecting the crevice beneath us to be so deep. Looking down did cause a small moment of blind panic when I realised I’d never ever been in water that deep before. The water was very clear (our taxi driver actually advised us to drink some, it was that clean) and so you could see all the beautiful rock colours on either side of the fissure and the plants that had grown below. I actually had a waterproof camera with me but, since I didn’t have a strap and the drysuit gloves are like Mickey Mouse hands, I decided not to risk bringing the camera in with me. Therefore I don’t have any photos of what the view was like, face down in the water, but it was pretty cool.

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After our snorkelling adventure we were given Maryland cookies and hot chocolate, and bundled back into our same taxi to go home. I sat in the back this time so Mei (I’m guessing at the spelling but this is the girl who got the migraine) could sit in the front. I ended up chatting to a guy from Guatemala who was showing me photos of a volcano you can climb in his home country, which is next to an active volcano so you get great selfies with the smoke rising in the background. I made a mental note to add Guatemala to my list. Since I was the last one in the bus when every got out at the stop before mine, my lovely taxi driver drove me the extra 15 metres or so to my hostel, which was very nice of him.

When I went back into the room, two girls from my hostel were in there. One of them was the girl who’d spoken to me this morning, who hurriedly apologised for being so forward this morning as in the dark she’d thought I was someone else. I chatted to the two of them for a while as they were both lovely, and then headed out to find some food. I went to Noodle Station, which I’d read about already and had a delicious bowl of warming soupy noodles.

I called a friend for my walk home, got a bit lost and, since I was on the phone I asked them to check where I was based on a bar in front of me. Hilariously, I was about 5 metres from my hostel. When I got into my room there was only me and the second girl from this morning there, so we chatted a for a while and both had a pretty early night.

Late Nights and Northern Lights

This is my second trip to Iceland in about four years, so I was hoping it wouldn’t be too overwhelming, especially since Reykjavik is often praised as a great city for solo female travellers, and this is my first ‘solo trip’ that I’ve not coincidentally (aka, not at all coincidentally) ran into a close friend. My flight over was an afternoon flight, landing at about sunset. I had a window seat on the plane, which I was very excited about, as the last time I made this journey I could see all of Scotland below me as I flew over it. It was so utterly stunning seeing the world spread out like an ancient map, I was excited at the chance to catch it again. Unfortunately, it was pretty cloudy the entire journey. Not only did this mean no Scotland-looking-like-Game-of-Thrones-opening-credits, but also this worried me slightly for another reason. The first time I went to Iceland I never saw the sky: not once. It was completely clouded over and, I know the chances of seeing the Northern Lights are never amazingly high if you’re only there for a few days, but I really wanted to at least see Reykjavik in sunlight!

The pilot did talk to us a few times and I got the impression he would have given us a guided tour of what we were seeing below if only it were actually visible. He mentioned that we might see the aurora from the plane but it was probably a little too early. Geezus. I had never ever considered that you might be able to see the Northern Lights from the plane. That must be utterly incredible. I say ‘must’ because *spoiler alert* I never witnessed this, unfortunately, although I did meet a girl later on in my hostel who had, and she confirmed my first thoughts: utterly incredible.

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After landing, the first thing I did was find a cashpoint to take some money out. I recently got a Monzo card, which is great as it allows you to spend abroad without worrying about commission etc. I wasn’t certain I’d be able to use my card everywhere, however, so I wanted a little cash, just in case.

I had researched the currency and the exchange rate, but this was my first moment of feeling a bit overwhelmed in Iceland. They use the decimal point weirdly when giving numbers in the thousands – it goes where we would simply have a space or a comma. So 1,000 ISK looks like it could be 1 ISK which can be a little worrying when you’re trying to take out the equivalent of about £50 and you might accidentally ask for £5 … or £500. Even just writing this I’m getting confused all over again! All I know is that 1.000 ISK is about £7. The first time I tried this though, I did have a bit of a panic, cancelled the transaction and went away to Google it. The main thing to remember is that they use a decimal place where we might use a comma so if it’s offering you 50.000 ISK then that’s actually about 50,000 ISK which is about £34 (ish). Anyway, after Googling, using a calculator and finding a new cash machine with fewer witnesses to my incompetence, I withdrew some money. Hilariously, the machine then converted it to GBP to check I was okay with the amount. Crisis averted. On the bright side, my maths was correct.

Next I had to go and buy my bus transfer to the city. I had a note scribbled on a post-it from my past self, telling me to get the flybus to bus stop number 6 in Reykjavik. I looked at the price of this online and was slightly staggered – it was £25. I usually check the amount when I do my research and I couldn’t remember it being this high, nor could I remember it being this high the last time I was here, although I do remember that I got the flybus then too. I was prepared for Iceland to be expensive so I just bought my ticket, eager to get to my hostel speedily.

My main reason for speed was that tonight was the night, across my whole three-night stay, that boasted the highest KP index and the clearest skies. If I was going to see the aurora, it would be tonight, but I needed to get checked into my hostel, get some dinner, and get myself to the bus stop before 8:30pm. I watched the sky the entire bus journey, but the sun was still setting so I didn’t see anything.

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When I arrived at Loft Hi Hostel, the staff member behind the desk was incredibly friendly, gave me my pass for breakfast (more on this later) and directed me to my room. The room was large with an ensuite. It wasn’t the nicest hostel room I’ve ever been in, in fairness, but that’s not to say it was bad. The main issue for me was that in most hostel rooms each of the beds has one long side against a wall – I’ve literally never been in one where the head is against the wall but the sides of the bed are exposed on both sides. This was the case in this room in that one of the bunkbeds was against the side wall, but the other two were kind of spaced along the middle a couple of feet apart (as the wall on the other side was a full window) . I like hostel beds to be against the wall so that I can face that way when I sleep and feel less awkward. That might just be my own weirdness but I don’t want to face a stranger when I sleep. It’s creepy.

Anyway, there was no one in the room and the beds weren’t numbered so it was weirdly hard to figure out which beds were free. In the end, I opted for the top bunk of the bed near the wall (the bottom was taken) and hoped that would be okay. Next point of action was to get food in time to get back for the Northern Lights tour. Luckily, I’d already researched a few places that sounded really good and one was around the corner: Icelandic Street Food. I actually cannot praise this place enough. Like many other establishments in Reykjavik, they serve soup in a novelty bread bowl. What makes them better than the other places is that they also offer free refills, free sweet treats on their counter (and I’m not just talking a bowl of lollipops- although they do have those – but plates of Icelandic pastries) and, since they also own the bar (providing extra seating when the café is full), they sometimes give out free beer vouchers. I was in a bit of a hurry so I didn’t get the bread bowl, and since there was no room in the restaurant, I went to their bar with a tub of lamb soup and a hunk of bread and butter for about 1850ISK. I didn’t realise the butter cost extra, although actually, it added a nice saltiness to the meal. I went back for one free refill, where I tried their fish soup (prawns and scallops in a langoustine broth) and tentatively asked about the sweet treats on the counter, which they confirmed were indeed free.

With a belly full of warm soup and assorted sweet treats, I bundled myself back to the number 6 bus stop in all of my thermal gear and layers, ready for my Northern Lights mystery tour.

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I had booked the tour through my hostel. I’d read that it was better to go on a minibus tour but the one I wanted, Time Tours was already fully booked a long way in advance and the others were just out of my price range. Instead, I booked for the Grayline Mystery tour which worked out at about £35. It was several massive coaches, which I was already resigned to, and a lovely little tour guide named Oliver who tried to teach a coach full of tired tourists solar physics on the journey. Bless him, Oliver was extremely excellent and made my night, even if I couldn’t fully focus on the physics lesson. He dropped us off with a ton of other coaches in a dark spot with a single building (which I think I visited the first time I came to Iceland on the Golden Circle tour!). We all crowded round, excitedly staring at the sky and Oliver promised he would scream ‘lights, lights’ if he spotted them.

The crowd were all staring the same way so I stared there too. I could see why, there was a kind of greenish hue to the sky that looked a bit like light pollution, but nothing like the dancing lights I’d seen in photographs and heard so much about. People were taking photos and selfies in front of this patch of sky, however, and it slowly started to dawn on me that this might just be it. I can’t explain the disappointment, especially when I heard Oliver shout ‘lights lights’ and point to the greenish cloud, that this was all it was.

So – some background – I have seen the northern lights before, but I never counted it because it looked like what I was seeing now. When I lived in Scotland, occasionally they would get so strong that they would appear over my little university town, but the most I ever saw was a slight greenish hue. It was cool, but very subtle and easy to dismiss as nothing – kind of like what I was seeing in Iceland now. For a while I actually resigned myself to the idea that this was all they ever were. I saw other people’s photos (my camera was getting nothing) where they’d made the same sad green hue look incredible and I realised maybe the lights existed in the editing but to the naked eye, they really weren’t that visible. Honesty, it was a sad moment. I stayed out in the cold for a while, trying to feel something close to awe, but then gave up and waited on the bus to be able to go back to my hostel. To the girls on the back of the bus playing Enya on repeat for an hour but drawing the line at Taylor Swift as ‘inconsiderate’: I too love ‘Blank Space’ but was far, far too tired to say.

When Oliver finally came back on the bus an hour later, he mentioned that he was hoping the lights would flare up and he’d keep a look out and let us know. This was my first hope that maybe they were sometimes something more. They never did flare up, and three hours later even Oliver had given up and admitted that ‘we failed in our hunt for the northern lights’. The fact that he told us we could rebook for free gave me hope that again, maybe they do get far more incredible. If this was insignificant enough to allow us another hunt for free, perhaps we really hadn’t see the full potential of the lights.

I was too exhausted to try again, especially as the KP index the following two nights was much lower than the 5 I had apparently witnessed. But it’s still on my list to see them properly one day.