Iceland: Geysers, Icelandic Conference, and the Northern Lights

Here we are in Iceland! It´s nice and relaxing and now Pieter can say that he´s driven in a foreign country :) Navigating is a whole fun activity by itself though. Every street name is at least 10 letters and they're not English phoenetic, so navigating by map it a challenge. At church, it was Icelandic Conference today. All members from all 7 branches in the country were there (about 75). A 70 (Olsen) was there as well as the mission president from Denmark. People were super friendly and we had a great time. Then we went and saw their geysers which was kind of like Yellowstone and where the North American and Eurasian continental plates are separating. If freezing though! The steam from the geysers freezing in midair. 

Iceland farms road

Mountains, the country is actually pretty flat, driving around reminded me of a pretty Nevada

Steaming water

Geyser going off

Water rippling with activity

Frozen steam

 

 

Breathtaking Northern Lights pictures courtesy of my friend, Lyn. My batteries died from the cold before things got really amazing. 

We got back just in time for a ward member who is a tour guide to take us, 2 girls also visiting, and 8 other people to the mountains to see the Northern Lights (so we´re definitely glad we went to church, it was super good). We seriously lucked out! Solar storm activity (what causes the Northern Lights) was at a 9/9 and it was perfectly clear. A local tour guide said that they were the best he'd seen since before November. Anyway, there are no words and pictures don't do them justice. The whole sky was swirling with stripes of green. It really is incredible! At about 11, we all got back into the van to warm up and head back and the engine started sputtering. The tour guide started laying on the gas, but it was to no avail. The engine died and wouldn't start back up. After some puttering under the hood, he found that a wire had come off of the alternator and the battery was completely dead. So, here we were, stuck on a rural mountain road, in the dark, with single digit temperature. Our driver made some desperate sounding phone calls (they were in Icelandic, so I'm not sure what all got said). He flagged down a car that passed by. That car tried to jump us, but apparently a tiny sedan doesn't have the power to jump a 15 passenger van. Finally, a little after midnight, another van was able to reach us, so we transferred over and they were able to jump the van. We finally got back to our hotel around 1 and konked out.

 

 

In the morning, got up, ate, checked out, did some shopping in downtown Reykjavik and then drove to the airport in Keflavik (it shares a runway with a US base). We watched the sea crash against the coast, arrived at the airport and went back to New York. One bumpy 5.5 hour flight, 1 hour subway ride, a 7 hour Greyhound ride, followed by a 30 minute city bus ride, and we made it home before 6:30am. Just in time, to sleep and make it to work by noon. We had a great time! (you all better note that I'm blogging about it and we all know how often I take the effort to blog) It seriously was the best thing we could have done with the money and it was so nice to finally get a vacation and see the world! Until next time!