ICELAND 2009
Iceland - when I used to hear the name I would picture a small place somewhere in the cold Atlantic, with fierce Nordic settlers trying to stay alive in rugged country made up of volcanoes and ice sheets.
And that is exactly what it is. But you can also throw in Nordic folklore fielded with wild monsters, vast windy deserts, beautiful seascape, grassy hills and low forests, Irish women with the Nordic and Celtic settlers, wonderful people who still speak the original language Icelandic, a beautiful city filled with the European jet setters partying in style, fantastic food including tons of small lobster, freezing mornings on the ocean following seagulls to fantastic whales, and watching little Puffins skip across the tops of waves telling themselves that they really can fly (kind of).
And so much more...
Hardware
- Nikon D70 DSLR camera
- Nikkor AF-S DX 18-70mm ƒ3.5-4.5G Iens
- iOlympus u1030SW digital camera
Software
- Apple Photos v8.0
- Pixelmator Pro v3.3.7
- Topaz Sharpen AI v4.1.0
- Topaz DeNoise AI v3.7.2
- Topaz Gigapixel AI v6.3.3
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Links:
JOIN ME ON MY 2009 TRIP TO THE SOUTH WESTERN SECTION OF ICELAND
Once again I traveled to an exciting place with a small group of fellow adventure travel people. Iceland was the destination with all of its legends and mystery. Please come along as you follow me through this wonderful trip complements of my need to photograph everything.
During this trip, we only covered one small section of Iceland as you can see by the above map. But it included a tremendous variety of activities and landscapes and experiences.
We visited waterfalls, grottos, life size models of LongHouses, a settler's viking house, a volcanic crater with a lake, geysers, hot spring fed rivers, ruins of fishing stations, an old churche by the ocean, and the site of the first ever parliament.
We ate tubs full of mini-lobsters, hiked through ice cold springs fed by glaciers, wandered below volcanoes, kayaked on the open sea, bathed in a stream that felt like bath water (further up we would have been steamed alive), soaked in city supported hot pots (hot tubs fed by natural hot springs), walked literally between two continental shelves, had white mud facials in a famous hot spring, and biked through a rift valley across a beautiful peninsula.
We experienced rough and beautiful lava flows, walked on lichen that was softer than any carpet ever made and which covered everything as far as we could see, we saw water that was both ice cold from the glaciers and boiling up from the ground, we watched whales surfacing amid huge flocks of seagulls, and we watched tiny little Puffins try to fly just above the waves.
Keep in mind, this was all in just one week in just one corner of Iceland. Still plenty to see and do on future trips visiting giant ice sheets, active volcanoes coming up from underneath glacial fields, visiting the mountain that Jules Vern wrote about in "Journey to the Center of the Earth", and explore all kinds of fiords, gravel deserts, and wild landscapes.
I almost forgot, we also experienced one of the coolest night spots for Europe - Reykjavik. There will be plenty of opportunities to experience this on future trips too.
I hope that you enjoy my sharing of just this small part of the Icelandic adventure!
