It is finished -- Part 9

This is it -- the final post about Iceland. Click here for Part 1.
This fairly small church is actually one of the two cathedrals in Iceland. The only civilization nearby is the former monastery. Iceland is now mostly Lutheran. When Catholicism ended here, the last bishop (and his sons) were taken to a river nearby and drowned. That is some serious reformation.

The beautiful and majestic Gullfoss which falls towards the bank before it finally crashes into a deep dark canyon.



The word "geyser" comes from Iceland, but the geyser (there is only one, technically, and all others are called after it) doesn't erupt very often. It was roped off, and people would jump the rope to explore. Ariel and I thought that walking on top of a sleeping geyser would be a good way to tempt it to awaken. Nearby lies Geyser's little brother, Strokker. He's much more reliable and erupts every couple of minutes.
Erupting
Receding

So, you know by now that my mother-in-law Tracey is nuts for birds. By the end of the trip, she had most everyone else nuts for birds too. Our guide would actually pick places to stop because they were nesting areas or the such for Tracey's benefit, and everyone would climb out and ooh and ah and try to figure out what things were called in Dutch or Danish (which is why I've tried to include the Latin of most things here). After the puffin, Tracey was excited to see the red-throated diver (loon). Our last day, she was successful. Even our guide had never seen one before this.
Red-throated diver: Gavia stellata
Once again, the color was all-natural and exquisite.
Finally, we ended the trip with a visit to the Blue Lagoon, a huge hot mineral spring. Having done this sort of smelly and wet thing already, I went and explored the area instead and took a lovely little 1 kilometer hike through the lava field and past the pools that are bather-free.

House sparrow: Passer domesticus
It was rather otherworldly.

Our group was great fun, and our guide Gyða and our driver Binni were both amazing. Yesterday, to escape the outrageous heat of the USA, we went to the cinema and watched "Journey to the Center of the Earth." As the main characters were driving through Iceland, we all felt some serious nostalgia for the super-springy moss and the harsh lava rocks (not to mention the cool summer air). It was strange to think that we were just there 2 weeks ago. It was an incredible experience, and we're so glad we went.

Vertu blessaður!

Puffin Along -- Part 8

Not only is my mother-in-law an avid bird-watcher, but she is also a serious stamp collector. She brought stamps along to trade, and at the farm house at which we were staying, she was given a whole amazing pile.
Groovy canyon.

We stopped at this one place, one of the rare instances of where someone was killed due to volcanic activity. Lava covered a farm here, and out of respect for the fellow who died, anyone who comes is asked to build a cairn on the site. The transportation authority actually hauls in rocks so visitors will have building supplies, but when we arrived, all of the rocks were already piled up. Ariel and Ivo (nice young Dutch man from a nice family traveling in our group) built a lovely pile.

Next we stopped in the town of Vik. Vik lies in a small valley while the church sits on a high hill above the town. If the nearby volcano erupts, Vik will be flooded, so all of the townsfolk are regularly drilled to get to the church.


All over Iceland we would see patches of a red looking grass. It isn't a grass at all, but a low little plant with these tiny red buds all over.
So, next we stopped at this pebble beach with a cliff of vast basalt columns. Near the cliffs, everyone was taking about a million pictures, and when I looked up, I could see lots of puffins flying in to their little burrows high up. I took probably 100 photos, all of them miserable. We all did.



Then, we got back on the bus, went to the other side of the bay (seen 5 photos up), and Gyða mentions that we might want to head up the left trail to see some more puffins. She wasn't kidding. We stood about 8 feet from the puffins and the entrance to their little underground dens. Tracey about peed on herself, and we all fell over ourselves to take their pictures (100s of them) and delete all of the crappy ones we had struggled to take.
Atlantic Puffin: Fratercula arctica



The long-tailed skua: Stercorarius longicaudus


Black-legged Kittiwake: Rissa tridactyla

Random brown ducks

My dad has been asking me to get him a quern stone for ages. I have been looking for ages. Unfortunately, they are nearly impossible to find in England as back when hand-mills were common in feudal times, the miller had the authority to smash any hand-mills he found (they were bad for business). So they are scarce in the UK. But in Iceland, I saw them everywhere. In the Skoga Folk museum, we came up some stairs and saw this pile of them. Sorry, Dad, I didn't steal any.
Three-eyed lamb. I love Livia's expression.


That night we stayed in Hella, our last night in our tour of Iceland.

And now, to interrupt our previously scheduled program...

We have arrived in the US of A. Theoretically, our normal phone number (703...) still works, but right now we're still fiddling with it. So currently, email is the best way to reach us (typically is).

All went smoothly. Little Man is happily adjusting to life in North America, and the girls keep giggling about novel things they see on the side of the road -- "Look! A red light!" Ariel keeps running off of the road while gawking at all of the things that were built in our absence. I keep marvelling at how damn hot it is.

Yes, it's hot like the damned. My body tells me it's past midnight, so I must retire. I still have 2 more days of Iceland left to blog. Damned indeed.