Keflavik Keflavík

... NEVER, that I have crawled over rough, ragged, jagged lava but that's what I had to do to get into the cave. Atines tells us later that this is a fairly new cave in spite of the fact that it already has a ladder down to it. There are no lights strung, no pathways, nothing, just the three of us in this black hole and our three hard hat lights. It is good that we have reflective tape on our coveralls because I am the last one into the cave and without the tape, I would have not ...

I had stayed up most of the night, finishing to pack up the rest of my stuff. Most had been sold, some had been put on a pallet to be shipped to China, few boxes were going to family for storage and lot was thrown away. During my last few days in Iceland for some time, it had snowed, like a gently reminder of who wonderful Iceland really can be. The christmassy looking snow all over, making Reykjavik more beautiful than ever. As ...

... is wonderful, cool in the summer and not too cold in the winter. There is almost no unemployment, free health care and education. There are eight universities, and the government will even pay for a college education taken in another country. Icelanders take pride in their country and their language, an example being their insistence on having their own word for something like the ipod, not just taking "ipod" as most other countries do. The social ...

... lleno de autobuses turísticos. Poco después llegamos a Balloch, y de allí a Luss, donde hemos hecho lo posible para intentar ver el Loch Lomond desde una colina, pero en la oficina de turismo tampoco nos han dado demasiadas indicaciones. Así que hemos visitado el pueblo, con sus casas llenas de rosales y flores y hemos llegado al puerto. El Loch Lomond es uno de los más grandes de Escocia, incluso con islas habitadas en su interior. La ...

... would deliver the suitcase to the hotel as soon as they find it (soon, I hope!). Thankfully my new dress for Tanja's wedding wasn't in that bag! Anyways, so after that ordeal we caught a bus to the Blue Lagoon - a spa built around a large hot spring renowned for it's anti-aging minerals and mud. The water was so warm compared to the low 50s temperatures outside. It felt odd at first to be swimming outside in such cold weather, but it's really a nice contrast ...

... before driving to the Blue Lagoon. We got to the Blue Lagoon and had to go through the interesting process of removing all jewelry, taking showers, and then conditioning our hair (against the harsh minerals) before going outside to the water. Imagine walking outside in your bathing suit - already wet due to the required shower - and being hit with 30 degree air. It was COLD and raining! We rushed into the water - about 100 ...

... muffin for Pat. For reference, breakfast cost $25 - food is REALLY expensive in Iceland. The sandwiches came out with the egg on top - difficult to eat but delicious when famished. We walked around the viewing deck, looking at the city, and then went down to the museum which told a story of Iceland with creepy wax figures. We then got back in the car to drive up north towards our hotel in the next peninsula. Since we hadn't slept in a while, we were ...

... a wonderful country.

... the northern lights it was -10 and I was wearing everything possible! Not sure what the wind chill was on top of that but I was wearing my good thermal, Tim's thermal, a t-shirt, black skivvy, another blue skivvy, another black long skivvy (down to my knees) a black jumper, my Peru alpaca wool jumper, a hooded ski jacket, two beanies, my earmuffs, possum wool gloves, ski gloves on top, wool tights, black pants, thermals socks up to my knees, bed socks, and black ...

... and simplicity, and funky too, Bjork isn't the only one. Alot of the houses are of corrugated metal with a little flourish here and there, and lots of white houses with red roofs. There are only 300,000 people in the whole country, think about that...that is not very many icelanders. So a third live in Reykjavik, and the rest of the country is very open and empty. The middle is all rocks and glaciers, this place is basically all lava with a ...