12 August, 2007

West-Iceland

I just realized that my last blog entry is almost 3 weeks ago. So it's really time for a update.

Heimay
After our long trek along the Laugavegur we took the ferry to Heimay a small volcanic island south of Iceland. And when I say small I mean small: it's just 5*5km. It's a wonderful place and, we had awesome weather. Even better it's one of the main breeding grounds for Puffins which are really cute and not really shy. You can get up to a few meters until they decide it's time to jump off the cliffs. Puffins are really funny animals, although they are birds it's hard to believe that they can fly long distances. When they fly it always looks as if they are just about to crash, it just seems as if their body would be too heavy for their short wings. The rest of the time we climbed on the two volcanic craters that almost destroyed the whole island in 1976. The ground is still hot enough to bake bread on some places there.
The only REAL bad thing is that my camera(Canon Powershot A80) died here. It's a real pity, but the lens does not retract any more and it just gives error messages. I was so angry about that, you can't imagine. I don't think there is a high chance that I get it working again, since it's 4 years old it's not worth a repair. However I want to blame canon: It's seems this is a common problem for my camera and they don't give a damn about it. I found a blog with some repair instructions but none worked for me. Even still we will have plenty of photos since Aaron is still photographing like a maniac.

Reykjavik
After 3 weeks out of civilization it was good to be back in a "real" city - the capital of Iceland. We spend a couple of days there walking along the shopping malls, visiting the national museum and meeting relatives of mine. The weather wasn't that good, but we made the best out of it. Reykjavik is a nice city but it did not meet my - high - expectations. Going out in Reykjavik is surely funny but since we are not swimming in money we skipped that part. But what we did instead was a visit to a really good Icelandic fish-restaurant. In our 7 weeks it will be the only time that we went to a restaurant since it's simply to expensive. But anyhow the food was delicious we all had a lobster soup and different kind of fish and mussels and we also tried whale-meat which was surprisingly tasty.

West-Iceland
After Reykjavik we went on to the western parts of Iceland. We weren't too lucky with the weather here but still we explored huge volcanic caves and we have been on some very nice sand-beaches. And we also tried another Icelandic-speciality: Hakarl. It's rotten shark. It's one of the few animals that has no kidney, so the meat is toxic when you get it. But since Icelanders were always fighting against starvation they found a method so that they can still eat it: They bury it into the ground and leave it there for a few months until the earth has soaked up all the toxic substances from the meat. After eating it we are "real men who never ever have to prove their bravery again" (Lonely Planet) :).

1 Comments:

Blogger queenmob said...

Did I already mention I envy you? I cant wait for you to return, and yes, ill not be returning for new York in September (which doesnt mean I wont return at all)and I cant wait for doing more stuff together in the coming up months.

huuugs

20:50  

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