.....After a really good night's sleep (no jet lag here), we ate an early breakfast then joined about fifty people from our group on a day tour from the hotel. After boarding a Greyhound-type bus, we set out from Reykjavik and took a leisurely trip for about two hours out through the lava fields surrounding the city and passed through some geothermal processing plants and a small town that is basically a community of greenhouses where they grow everything from tomatoes to bananas. It's interesting that they have to basically create an artificial night/day and light/darkness for the greenhouses here. On June 21--summer solstice--there is basically no darkness and they have to shade the plants part of the time while on December 21--winter solstice--there is less than two hours of night so they use artificial light. Last night, it got dark around 11:oo pm and started getting light again about 4:30 am. It does take some getting used to except that I was so tired last night that I went to sleep around 8:00 and slept through until nearly 6:00 so I basically didn't have any nighttime yesterday.
Our first stop was at a waterfall called Seljalandsfoss. Although not a huge waterfall, it was spectacularly beautiful. The water drops 130 feet into a shallow pool and we were able to work our way around behind the water and up around the other side. As you might not expect from a place called "Iceland,", the landscape is lush and green everywhere here. At this point on the second day, small groups are forming within the larger tour and people are starting to get to know each other. This is really neat in that everyone here has one thing in common--loving to be outdoors and running.
After spending some time at Eljalandsfoss, we continued on with the infamous volcano Eyjafjallajokull in the background. We could see it fairly clearly but it was just too far away to get a good photo. We did, however, stop at a large farm that had been the scene of a famous photo during the eruption. In the photo, the house and buildings were nearly covered in ash and the sky was so black the photo looked like it had been taken with black and white film. The owners had nearly abandoned the farm afterward but as time passed, everyone around here began to realize that volcanic ash makes a great fertilizer so they cleaned the buildings up and today it is one of the lushest, green farms in the valley.
There are several volcanoes active in Iceland right including one that is expected to be at least ten times the destructive force of last year's whenever it does blow. As our guide pointed out, Iceland is relatively new island--about 23 million years old--which is far younger than the Rocky Mountains. We saw some islands off the coastline including one that was created when an underwater volcano eruption sent lava into the saltwater and a good-sized island was formed in the 1970s. The Iceland government declared it a human-free zone and today only scientists are allowed access and they are studying how plant and wildlife develop in new environments. Already there are birds, plants and even small animal colonies developing on it.
We continued on southeastward and stopped at a beach location near the southernmost point of Iceland called Reynisfjara. By now it was very windy and the temperature had dropped to the "jacket" point. After a short walk to the beach, we explored some basalt column formations and caves that included a colony of Puffins. These are small birds that I think look like miniature flying penguins. The geological columns were formed int the side of a small mountain and were usually six-sided and very large. At times, we literally had to lean into the wind to walk. This is usual here and, especially back in Reykjavik, we've had excellent and beautiful weather on this trip.
In a distance, a small peninsula marked the southernmost part of Iceland and included a rock outcropping with a small hole in it. Southernmost maybe, but we're still not very far from the Arctic Circle right now.
On the way back, we stopped at a larger waterfall near the tiny village of Skogar. The waterfall, called Skogafoss, is situated above a recreational and camping site. The water falls 200 feet into the River Skogaa. Unlike the earlier waterfall today, we couldn't walk behind this one but we could climb a series of steep stairs and view the waterfall from the top.
We then returned back to Rekyjavik and stopped at the Expo center and picked up our race packets and shirts for tomorrow's race. In the evening about 30 of us walked downtown and ate at an Italian restaurant. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel and I was asleep by 10:00.
Race Day tomorrow......
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