Our guide, Sofia, picked us up at the hotel too early, before our first stop, the Blue Lagoon, opened, so we wasted a little time driving around Hafnarfjörður, a small fishing town just south of Reykjavík. We visited the fish market, which was not especially exciting to me, as it was a big, frigid warehouse full of plastic tubs of dead fish packed in ice. The others discussed methods of cooking the various species of fish (we had Scots, Brits, Americans, and Canadians, so regional distinctions were much debated and compared), but this was of no interest to me. On the way to the market, though, we passed the Thor, a former Icelandic Coast Guard boat that had been used in the Cod Wars (a series of skirmishes from 1959 and 1976 between British and Icelandic forces over the rights to fishing areas) now converted into a floating restaurant. The British man began whispering excitedly to his wife, and it transpired that, in 1964, a trawler he was working on had been attacked by the Thor.
I had been wary of going to the Blue Lagoon. It sounded like a tourist trap to me; plus, I don't really care for hot springs. A coworker who recently went to Iceland told me that they make you strip naked in the locker room, walk naked to the communal shower, shower naked, walk naked back to your locker, and put on your bathing suit (and she said there was a monitor who made sure you followed the rules). I didn't feel very good about that. As it turned out, though, we got there so early that no monitor was on duty. So I was able to go to the shower in my suit, strip in the shower, and then put my suit back on. (They want you to clean yourself both clad and unclad so that they don't have to use chlorine in the "lagoon.")
The
lagoon was a pleasant surprise. It was created accidentally when
a nearby plant that pumped water from a geothermal spring to send to Reykjavík
allowed excess water to spill onto the lava. Over time, the minerals
in the water sealed the porous lava and created a pool, and the story goes
that a worker at the plant bathed in the pool one day and found that it
helped his eczema. Since then, it's become a renowned spa.
The water is actually bath-water warm, not boiling hot,
and the sulfur smell is minimal. We were the first people there,
so we had the whole lagoon to ourselves. The water is an ethereal
blue and so opaque that you can't see more than an inch or so into it.
As you move around the lagoon, you find vents where hotter water is flowing
in. Parts of the bottom are sand, parts are mud, and most of it is
mineral-coated lava (meaning that you frequently get large rocks jutting
up unexpectedly). It was very cool to be in such a natural setting;
the buildings around the lagoon are small and unobtrusive, and the pool
is ringed by rugged, moss-covered lava rocks. Beyond the pool you
can see the industrial plant that provides the water, which definitely
gives the experience an offbeat vibe. The day I was there, the wind
was blowing so strongly that it created choppy waves in the lagoon 
and
sent the copious steam skimming across the surface. The lagoon is
very shallow, meaning that to keep your entire body submerged -- and believe
me, with the icy wind and the below-freezing temperatures, you will want
to -- you have to scuttle along like a crab.
After the Blue Lagoon, we headed to the small fishing
town of Grindavík for lunch, then drove down the peninsula, which
is completely flat and consists entirely of lava, some of which is covered
with moss, much of which is bare. NASA trained its moon-bound astronauts
in this area, and it's easy to see why. It's desolate, rugged, mostly
devoid of vegetation, and has nothing to stop the wind that howls in from
the North Atlantic. The weather grew noticeably harsher on the peninsula;
it got cloudy, colder, and much windier than Reykjavík. I
usually enjoy flying, but after experiencing the staggering wind, I admit
to being a little nervous about taking off from that airport.
By this time, our tour group was just 5 people: me, a
pair of Canadian college-age women, and a middle-aged American couple.
The couple sat next to me and engaged me (reluctantly, on my part) in conversation.
Finding out I lived in DC, the man asked if I'd ever seen the President.
"Not this one," I said, "but I saw the last one a lot."
"Ever met him?"
"Yeah, a couple times."
"Have you met the new president?"
"I have no desire to."
Here we got into a little snarling over the not-the-real-president. Sofia broke in to say that what she didn't like about Bush was that he... "what do you call it? He kills people."
"Oh, capital punishment," said the American man. "That's why I voted for him."
He and Sofia got into a debate over the merits of the
death penalty, and I had a strong urge to jump in to bolster Sofia's weak
arguments against it and to rebut the man's chilling comment that he didn't
mind if a few innocent people were accidentally put to death because the
jails were full and we had to do something with the criminals, but
then I realized I had several more hours with these people, and the last
thing I wanted to do was make it more unpleasant than it was already shaping
up to be. Plus, I'm on vacation, and I don't want to talk about politics.
So I held my tongue.
But from then on, the man had me pegged as a bleeding-heart
liberal, and he taunted me every chance he got. He repeatedly made
chauvinistic comments and tried to prod me into an argument. Now,
it's annoying enough when someone you know says offensive things purely
to get a rise out of you, but it's just beyond the pale when a total stranger
does it. Of course, I'd expect nothing less from a Republican.
The most galling thing about this man was that he and his wife had traveled to places I've dreamt of going to. The week before, they'd been to Antarctica as part of a trip that included Chile and the Falkland Islands, and they talked about their trips to Australia, Brazil, and Kenya (which they persistently referred to as "Africa," as when Sofia asked them what their favorite countries were, and they replied, "Egypt and Africa"). Yet all that exposure to other cultures seemed to have no effect on them. The man paid for everything in dollars and told me that he didn't see the point of changing money to the native currency because you only have to change it back again, and "they'll take dollars if they really want to get paid." He frequently complained in front of our guide that he couldn't understand what she was saying, even though she spoke excellent English (most egregiously, he claimed not to understand her pronunciation of "cod" when we were in the fish market, and she said plaintively to the rest of the group, "Did I not say it correctly?" The British man, glaring at the American, said icily, "No, you said it absolutely properly"). How unjust is it that such ugly people have the money to travel so much?
My
favorite stop of the day was at the very tip of the peninsula, where the
ocean crashed against lava cliffs. As Sofia said, looking straight
ahead, the next piece of land you'd come to is Antarctica. I love
that kind of landscape, and the barren rocks seemed especially fitting
here against the sea. Sofia told us that they had just finished filming
a movie called Monster
here; after calling her office to check, she told me it was directed by
Hal Hartley. That seemed rather improbable to me -- Hal Hartley isn't
the type of director you would connect to a monster movie, nor is he the
type who you would think would have the budget to shoot outside of New
Jersey. But when I got home and looked it up on the IMDB,
I found the movie, now called No
Such Thing. It's not the kind of monster movie I was thinking
it would be, and it certainly sounds much more Hartleyesque than what I'd
envisioned from the title.
After a brief stop at a rather pathetic little aquarium
that had all of five tanks, I and the American couple were dropped off
at the airport (where I promptly distanced myself from them as quickly
as possible). My flight home was delayed, and it started snowing
just before we took off, but fortunately once we got above the clouds,
it was still light. I say that because, over what I later figured
out was Greenland, the clouds broke, and I got a stunning view of snow-covered
mountains poking through a giant glacier, where there was not a trace of
human influence. The mountains ran right into the iceberg-clogged
ocean. The clouds gathered again, and then cleared over what was
probably northern Newfoundland -- gorgeous rocky hills rising among milky
lakes and rivers.
And the movie on the way back was O Brother, Where Art Thou? -- since I'd already seen it twice, I just glanced at the screen now and then, tuning in for the scenes I really wanted to see again. I didn't hear anybody else on the plane laughing at all.
To sum up, I think I went at the perfect time of year.
Although more attractions are open during the peak tourist season, things
are also a lot more expensive and a lot more crowded. The weather
was great, and most of the places I visited outside of Reykjavík
were nearly or completely deserted (except for my tour group). I'd
hate to see the place even more tourist-infested; as it was, everywhere
I went in Reykjavík I heard English or German (quite a few Brits
in addition to the Americans and Germans). Everyone speaks English
-- normally, I would try to learn at least a few phrases in the native
language, but I couldn't find an Icelandic phrase book anywhere, and the
few phrases in the back of my guidebook (the otherwise excellent Insight
Guide) didn't have a pronunciation guide. But if I tried to pantomime
what I wanted, people instantly broke into English. In fact, by the
time they graduate from school at age 16, Icelanders are required to read,
write, and speak Icelandic, Danish, and English. (They speak English
with an almost Irish accent, and they have a tendency toward mildly amusing
turns of phrase, like the flight attendant on Icelandair who told us that
beer and wine were complimentary with our meal, but "spirits come at a
price." Tell me about it!).
I definitely recommend the trip (hey, I might even come
with you!). Icelandair runs the dirt-cheap Midweek
Madness specials (I paid about $400 for round-trip air, 2 nights hotel,
transfers between the hotel and airport, and a single supplement) from
BWI, Boston, New York, Orlando, and Minneapolis, usually from October till
April. You can only go on the schedule I did -- you can't add days
-- so it's short and tiring, but it's a good introduction to the country.