Back from Iceland and still not used to the sky actually getting black. The trip was amazing, a perfect honeymoon. We rented a car and circumvented the entire island, over 2800km, in just under 2 weeks. Saw every imaginable natural wonder; glaciers, icebergs, geisers, deserts, waterfalls (lot of those), caverns, cliffs, caves, black sand beaches, moss covered lava, hot bubbling mud pits, puffins, horses, sheep, eurotrash, absolutely everything.
Of photo geek interest, I took along both my Hasselblad and 50/80/150mm lenses, and the Mamiya 6 (with 50/75mm lenses), and shot both of them heavily. The Mamiya was used probably 2/3rds of the time, as we were hiking a lot and it’s a lot more portable. I brought my big honkin’ tripod as well, but I think only even once got dark enough to bother using it. 24 hours of usable daylight helps you shoot a *lot* of photos, and I basically burned through all of the film I stockpiled in the last month, which I thought was going to be overkill to bring, but I’m glad I did, though now I’ve got a *lot* of scanning to do.
As for Iceland itself, it’s a pretty amazing country. A lot of people assumed we were Icelandic when they first said hi to us in Icelandic, which was nice, but led to lots of “ég tala ekki íslensku” (“I don’t speak Icelandic”) before they broke into perfect English. Once you leave Reykjavik, it gets remote fast, which was incredible. Once a day (maybe), we’d come through a “city” of never more than a few thousand people, but usually less than a hundred. It was *sparse*. I loved it.
Michelle was an incredible tour guide too, immersing herself in guide books and maps, reading the Sagas, really pouring herself into it. All I had to do was drive, and every so often she’d be like “Hey, want to go see the crack in the plates where North America and Europe come together, then go hot tubbing again in a naturally fed hot pool?” and I’d say, “Yes, I’d like that very much” and we’d be there. Awesome. Oh, and bring your own booze. We brought a couple of bottles of wine and vodka with us. It’s too expensive to buy there, if you can even find it outside of the cities. And you gotta have a champagne cocktail when you’re chilling in those hot tubs at 2am and the sun’s still out.
(For Justin)
Leaving tomorrow. Kind of sad to be done, but we are burnt out. Iceland rules.
Honeymoon in Iceland.
Day 4 of 12.
