The Last Weekend

i won three beeers!

Friday night after hiking Mt. Esja, Jeremy, Melissa and I decided to find some Reykjavik nightlife. We began the night with our usual, The English Pub. We get into town early because the bus stops running at 11 and the english pub has music and nice outdoor seating. I was feeling lucky and decided to spin the famous wheel. It's 1500 krona to spin and you can win up to a meter beer or no beer. I won 3 beers yayyy! After that, we mostly just bar hoped from place to place finding some fun. We got home around 4ish (I think) and found a man dressed in a princess dress in our hostel kitchen. Turns out it was the stag party from England and he was the groom. Jeremy and I decided it was a good night/morning to go for a swim in the ocean and convinced them to join us. Those guys were a riot and it got me looking forward to going to England in July!!
Anyways, we eventually woke up Saturday and were in desperate need of some greasy American breakfast and found Prikid. Turns out we went there the night before; most places downtown seem to be cute cafes by day and grungy bars/clubs by night. Prikid thankfully had the all-american hangover curing breakfast we were looking for. After that I hung around town looking into the tourist shops and reading on the green by the parliament.

Glymur

 We decided that Sunday would be our last full day to be free in Iceland and decided to rent a car and go on another adventure. Agust reccomended Snaefellsnes, the peninsula between Reykjavik and the Westfjords. There is a glacier, Snæfellsjökull, at the end of it which you can see from Reykjavik on a clear day. This glacier is famous for being the starting point in the book/movie Journey to the Center of the Earth. We set off around noon (late start because Hertz messed up our hostel pick up) and headed to Glymur, Iceland's tallest waterfall. Glymur is at the end of the Hvalfjodur bay so instead of taking the new tunnel under the bay we detoured around it. It was a beautiful drive all along the sea overlooking cliffs and beaches. We were expecting it to be a big touristy attraction like Gulfoss, but instead found a small hiking trail leading towards the falls off a dirt road. It turned out to be much more of a hike than we were expecting and hiked for about an hour, making it about two thirds of the way up before turning back. The waterfall is in a huge gulley so it was hard to see, and the trail was more like a mountain climb than a walk.

the 'trail'

river crossing

We found a completely different trail on the way back down which went up through a cave rather than around the cliff face. It was pretty cool. Back to the car and onwards towards Snaefellsnesjokull towering over us.

Snaefellsnesjokull getting closer!

After about 1.5 hours we made it to the peninsula, and we were the only car on the road. It was a barren flat land; just us and the sheep. I was getting tired of driving and Jeremy decided he could try to learn how to drive shift. He actually caught on pretty quick and realized that so long as he doesn’t stop, he’ll be fine! That was until we convinced him to turn onto a gravel road that appeared to lead up to the glacier. The slow driving caused some issue and after a lot of jolting around we swapped positions and it was my job to drive us up a mountain to the glacier.

Our little but mighty car

We were all terrified winding up the mountain in our little Toyota and eventually decided to park the car and continue on foot. The glacier is much less intimidating up close, but we had fun playing in the snow in June! By now it was pretty late, so we continued driving around the glacier/peninsula, stopping at a few view points and finally in Olafsvik for a delicious meal complete with an amazing desert! After a long and eventful day, we were actually looking forward to our hostel and our beds. Another great Sunday to complete our last weekend in Iceland. 

Blue Lagoon and Mt. Esja

the steam on the right is a geysir in the lagoon

covered in silica

Lecture on Thursday we had a little exercise by creating our own country and brainstorming on ways to make it sustainable and how extensive it would be for a community to rely on renewable energy. It was interesting and helped to put real numbers into the equations. That afternoon we took a trip to Carbon Recycling International, which is a small methane plant next to a geothermal power plant (it isn’t really international and is the only one so far). I found the process confusing but basically geothermal plants release carbon dioxide so CRI takes the CO2 and through a chemical process transforms it into methanol and water. The water is pumped back into the ground and the methanol can be used as an additive with gasoline to be more renewable. It is very experimental and is still quite small, but it sounds like if it works out, it is a good thing to have at all geothermal plants. After that, we headed to the infamous Blue Lagoon! We have been hearing about the Blue Lagoon from everyone since we arrived in Iceland and have been anticipating it for the past three weeks, so my expectations were pretty high. It is a geothermal spa and probably the biggest tourist attraction in Iceland. It is just one big geothermal pool that is this milky blue color due to the natural minerals. There is an abundance of silica which is a white clay that is supposedly really good to rub on your skin. Agust informed us on the ride over that the Blue Lagoon actually uses the discharged water from the Svartsengi power plant. I doubt most tourists know that! Surprisingly, it exceeded my high expectations and it was amazing. I’ve never seen water that color before and it was so huge with not too many tourists. We spent about an hour in the water. Depending on where you swam it went from warm to extremely hot. Of course we had to rub the silica on our faces, although the only results I noticed was my hair becoming extremely dry and frizzy after. Needless to say, it was a great day!

Friday morning was a wrap up on the topic of renewable energy and Agust let us out early. Jeremy and I decided today was the day to hike Mt. Esja, one of the mountains surrounding Reykjavik. It was quite the bus journey to get there; we attempted to hike it our first week in Iceland, but got stranded half way there between bus routes. After three different buses, we made it to the base and headed up! Hiking is so different here because there are no trees and it is on lava rocks and dust. There were six marked points along the way, each with a sign written in Icelandic (of course). It took us about an hour to troop up to point 5 which had a big rock along with a guest book to sign.

where's the trail?

There were two groups of people taking a long rest but, aside from pondering the image of a stick figure falling, we didn’t think twice about continuing up to the top. From point 5 to 6 there was hardly a trail and pretty much straight up piles of small rocks and dusty soil. Jeremy went first and was scrambling and sliding down the mountain and it wasn’t until we noticed a man trekking down about 10 meters to our left that we realized we weren’t even on the trail…oops. I took over the lead and found the trail again and finally spotted the 6^th sign. It still wasn’t the top though. Looking up was a scrambling cliff and we figured we made it this far, why not go for it.

view from the top

The trail was not marked at all so I gave it my best shot and climbed up, finding chain ropes to hang out while we climbed along the treacherous summit. We eventually made it to the top and it was well worth it! We stared down at the tiny city that was Reykjavik, managing to spot the Pearl, near where our hostel is. Esja isn’t so much of a mountain as it is a plateau shelf-like ridge. The other side was a rock field that looked like it went on forever. You could see cairns marking the way into the horizon. We knew the last bus from the parking lot left at 6:08 and it was about 5:30, but the view was so great we didn’t bother rushing. After taking it all in, we climbed down. Halfway down the trail we actually saw the bus drive right by the driveway, so we weren’t to sure how we would get home. Luckily, my parents trained me well and we asked a woman who had just come down for a ride into the city and she agreed. We came back to the hostel to find a group of loud, drunk British guys staying in our hostel for the weekend for a stag party. Should be an interesting weekend…

Week 3

humpback whale tale!

Whale..yumm

Week three: We had classes each morning with Agust all week. On Monday we went over geothermal energy. It is much more complex than hydropower, so I am glad we learnt about that one first. Geothermal energy has many more parts rather than simply water being pushed through a turbine, spinning a generator. In this case, one needs to first find a location with high geothermal activity (usually near a volcano). A Borehole is drilled and hot liquid is pumped out of the ground. The liquid is usually a combination of steam and fluid, so it goes through a separating tank to separate out the steam and recycle the fluid/water. Then the steam goes through the turbine (causing the generator to spin). Depending on the complexity of the system there are more parts such as condensers (creating cold air below the turbine, creating a vacuum and making the turbine more efficient), heat exchangers and storage tanks. Sometime the excess steam can be used for space heating. Also, some areas of geothermal activity are only used for district heating, not electricity.

After lecture on Monday we went whale watching off the reykjavik harbor! It was fun, such a beautiful and sunny day made being out on the water very enjoyable. The first stop was by an island filled with birds, especially puffins, but we saw them up close and personal on our trip south last week so it wasn’t as cool. Then we headed out into the waters to find some whales. We saw minke whales maybe 3 or 4 times, and a humpback whale. The tour guide was very excited about the humpback because it was the first one he’s seen this season. After enjoying the beauty of the creature out in the ocean, we worked up an appetite for trying some minke. Iceland is one of three countries that can still legally hunt whale (Norway and Japan are the other two) and it is still a huge discussion whether or not it should be legal. We went to a cute little fish shack called Sea Baron and ordered a skewer of minke whale to split. It was very rare, which made it unenjoyable for me, but the outer grilled bit was actually quite tasty. It was like a fishy tasting steak.

The Boreholes were covered in funky looking shells

After another lecture on renewable energy on Tuesday we visited Hellisheidi geothermal powerplant. With all the boreholes it is a huge area covered with pipes and different tanks and steam separators. Apparently there are beautiful mountains all around the plant (we couldn’t see them because it was so foggy) and the plant was a bit of a controversy because it disturbed the natural beauty of the hiking. I find this a bit silly because Iceland is covered in naturally pure beauty and there are plenty of other places to hike around the area, and the energy produced is a very good profit for the country. But that’s just me.

Relaxing on the green

Agust gave us Wednesday afternoon off, so we decided to go down to the beach and have lunch there. It was filled with kids because it was the last week of school, but the weather was amazing so we all just laid out and relaxed. After a while of that, Jeremy and I decided to head downtown for a drink or two. We started off at a café with a little outdoor patio and couldn’t figure out where all the people were hanging out on such a beautiful day. After that beer, we walked over to the parliament to find the green filled with 20-something year olds drinking beers, who knew? So we decided to follow suit, headed to the liquor store to buy some singles and hung out on the green all afternoon.