Tomakint's Update 3rd July

Posted by at 8:27 AM, July 3, 2004

Hi everyone,

I woke up by 6.08am in preparation for the trip slated for the galciers today. The journey commenced at around 7.14am under a misty morning.

Although, the day was still clear enough for me to view the beautiful, well patterned edifices that lined the city of Reykjavik that morning; companies, banks, hotels, housing estates, expansive farms, gas stations, bridges, dams, geysers, volcanoes, waterfalls, vast deserts and of course the native Icelandic horse. Something seem to catch my attention as we went on, the Icelandic people are not attached to their very rich culture alone (oh yes they have a very rich culture), they seem to blend it with some flings from many parts of the world...

...especially in their musical tastes as you hear different types of music around mainly from the USA. While speeding along the highway I discovered that at times we seem to be moving round a great wide circle and on another occasion it is a straight race. I could recalled we running into the mist as we sped on, this makes visibility slightly impossible, but it didn´t last long as we broke through under a few seconds. The man at the wheel, Martin Norman, a Norwegian, is an expert "cicerone," a staff of Greenpeace, he was helpful in pointing to us places of interests while journeying to the "land of galciers" an articulate narrator whom I got attached to two days before the journey. I remembered him pulling over at a petrol station, not to buy fuel, but to buy some comestibles for sustenance at a supermarket nearby.

After driving for about two and half hours we got to a place waiting for the a guide to take us up the mountain, just ten minutes later, a Nissan jeep with a tractor-like tires pulled over where we packed and the second phase of the journey to the "land of galciers" began. It was sight to behold, as we journeyed up the extinct volcano that last erupted in the year 1948 according to our guide, Gudmundur, an Icelandic, who claimed he witnessed the last volcanic eruption in Iceland in the year 2002. Tindfjöll, as the 1,560-metre volcano is called, means "group of mountains," indeed this is so, as the volcanoes form a chain of mountains interjecting one another and buried under the misty cloud. The jeep is fitted with a Global Positioning System device; I could see the temperature reader reading 8° Celsius, as we approached the station, a little house on a 600-metre height. We visited the ice-cave, a place filled with trapped snows, slippery icy surface and there I had an interview, after that we took off for the station back to relax for another journey, this time around to the "real land of the galciers." The station is a well-planned apartment, built of hardwood painted all pink with the border painted white, there we settled down for a refreshment of coffee and doughnuts. The station house was built by a native of the land alongside his friends who came up there to settle in the 1960s of which some are late. He now shares the place with his children and grandchildren, quite a cozy environment. We took our journey from there after a 30-minute rest, trudging through the steep, slope, rough and sinking ground of volcanic ash spewed out as a result of the explosion is breath-taking, we got to our destination, a 1,230-metre height. It drizzled for about 25 minutes, this delayed the video interview myself and Marnee were supposed to grant, we later had it. What an experience to be up there, far away from the maddening crowd, I can burst into a hysterical laughter without shocking the sheer civilization of the city life, indeed Tindfjöll is a place to be, but remember to go with your warm clothes.

We are bound to have a full day, after this, our next port of call is the waterfalls, there we took some shots of another wonder of nature, watching the waters dropping from a height of about 300 metres into a shallow pool is quite amazing the water seems to be whitish when viewed from afar, but it is colourless. A horse-ride is amusing but our tired body wouldn´t co-operate, this we botched for some other day, now home bound we got to the ship by 8.18pm, then I knew today marks the beginning and the end of a trip to the "land of volcanoes," I feel fulfilled within me, an aura of satisfaction filled me up all day long, it was an experience to remember for the rest of my life!

-tomakint