Fire and Ice

Friday night late we got back from an 11 day trip to Iceland and Greenland.  I like islands and Bob likes cold polar regions so it was a good match for us to resume our adventure travel.  We joined a Lindblad/National Geographic tour so it wasn't really so adventurous and very comfortable and well done.  Iceland is a land of fire.  There are 30 active volcano fields and an earthquake almost every day somewhere.  We saw fumaroles, bubbling mud pots, geysers, steam vents, hot water spas and lots of lava fields covered with moss.  The only thing that's cheap in Iceland is electricity.  70% of the electricity is geothermal.  It was interesting to see pipes running along the ground by the roads carrying the hot water to and from the power plants.  The rest comes from hydroelectric.  There are also lots of big and very beautiful rivers and waterfalls with the water from the melting glaciers as well as the ample rainfall.  The South Coast of Iceland reminded us so much of the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand, Bob kept referring to our trip as one to New Zealand.  There are only 360,000 people in Iceland, with 2/3 of them in Reykjavik, the capital.   We went of several walking tours of the city.  The Hallgrims Church is a landmark as it is visible from everywhere.  It's a Lutheran parish church, but is very large and has distinctive architecture reminiscent of the pentagonal columnar rock formation on the South Coast.  The other outstanding building is the Harpa, the opera house designed by Olafur Eliasson.  It blew Bob away with it's endless glass geometric shapes and designs.  It was a joy to photograph!  But it was the nature that I loved in Iceland  My favorite activity was a 3 mile hike to a hot thermal creek off in the hills not far from Reykjavik.  It was good to hike in the countryside and then soak in the hot water of the creek.  Far and away the best part of our trip was the visit to Greenland.  We flew in a chartered jet to a huge airfield, built by the U.S. In the Cold War, got on a bus, rode 1/2 hour to a dock and took a zodiac to our ship the National Geographic Explorer.  What a pleasure to be on this well appointed, most comfortable ship with a very professional staff there just to take care of us.  The first night we had a marvelous display of the Northern lights.  They were so bright, even  IPhone photos worked.  Greenland has only 55,000 residents and very few towns and we visited two of them.  There is no infrastructure so the only way to get from place to place is by air or sea.  We learned about the Inuit culture from a Greenlandic family on the ship (the woman being an ex-Prime-Minister and a current Danish Parliament member).  If Iceland is fire, Greenland is ice.  We saw glaciers and icebergs.  The fjords are grand, the mountains big and imposing and the tiny tundra plants very beautiful.  I was overcome with the contrast of the big views and the wonder of the plants, gorgeous in their autumnal color.  Imagine an orange leafed birch tree or a blueberry bush complete with blueberries both just 1 inch high.  We saw whales and seals but no seabirds.  Any bird worth it's feathers had migrated months ago.  After the tour ended, our oldest son joined us and we spent 4 more days in Reykjavik.  Being put off by the high cost of restaurants (an average main dish costs at least $50 US), we "ate in", enjoying fish and chips and salad.  It was a wonderful trip and my visual memory bank is full up with images of the amazing nature we saw.  The trip was a real success enhanced by having good weather and good health the whole time.

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