Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Day 5: Glacier Lagoon

Continuing on Route 1 heading east, we left Vik after taking a few photos of the fabulous scenery around. Here's one:

Vik
This is Vik
Damaged bridge
A damaged bridge near highway
As we stopped by Jökulsárlón, it was the first time in Iceland we had a chance to see (closely) or even touch ice. We took a boat tour and traveled in the lagoon which is full of melting ice berg which later on flows into the sea. It was cold and windy.
Glacier Lagoon
This is the Glacier Lagoon
Some ice burg appears to be blue due to optical illusion as they absorb all the other light rays but the blue rays. The black ice burgs are in fact ones that are covered with volcano ashes.
Blue Ice Burg
Blue Ice Burg
The ice in the lagoon are over thousand years old so it is pretty strong and takes 5 times more time to melt it. While under water, they are crystal clear but would soon crystalize once in contact with air and turns 'white'.
Holding Ice
Me holding ice. Icy!
To a person who has never seen snow in his life, crystallized ice burgs are already pretty new and exciting for me. Tomorrow, we've planned to go up to icy mountains and have close contact with snow.

Back on land, we moved on to our next destination - Höfn, a pretty small town. Our dinner at the hotel we stayed in was a fish buffet (which was really cheap compared to set dinner costing only Kr 3200 each). Every dish that could be made from salmon was served e.g. smoke salmon, steamed salmon, salmon dressing, salmon pie ... Delicious and full. We'll continue tomorrow.

Posted by Picasa

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

It is my understanding that there is not much ice in Iceland and there is not much greenary in Greenland. They were named opposite to character to throw off the Vikings.

Is this true?

Keith Chan said...

It is true that Iceland doesn't have much ice especially during summer time.

I have heard of the rumour that the names of Iceland and Greenland were somwhow swaped but never got the chance to clarify.

Post a Comment

Feel free to leave your thoughts below. Either your personal experience in Iceland or your questions, all welcomed!

Off topic comments will be removed