Chasing Waterfalls: An Icelandic Escape

Let's start from the beginning. I receive a text from one of my good friends asking if I wanted to go to Iceland since she had found an amazing deal. Without much thought I said, "Yes." I did not know where Iceland was exactly, I just knew it was not Greenland, and if I can recall correctly from 4th grade geography class, Greenland is in fact much colder than what the name would lead you to believe and Iceland, much warmer than what the name would lead you to believe.

The entire trip was quite memorable actually, from the scenic views of Iceland's mountain terrain, to the endless flat lands blanketed by black sand, remnants of the country's volcanoes, to the countless restless, roaring waterfalls that seem to disappear into the ground from a distance and to the weather, which even Mean Girl's Karen Smith cannot predict with her "special" forecast predictor. HAH!

Nevermind, the comedic memories made with the ladies I traveled where we slept in until 20 min before check out on our second day, or our hostel's lock being broken from the inside, reminding me of all the gore-fest thriller movies I have seen, or the cancelled glacier tour and total cloud cover hiding the beauty of the aurora borealis from our traveling eyes. The four days of beating tourorists, from wrecking havoc on our pictures, to figuring out where to eat breakfast or dinner or whose turn it would be to drive against mother nature's power. Yes, this was fun.

In our four days, we were only able to travel half of the Golden Circle. From Keflavik to Reykjavik to Vik to Jökulsárlón and back again. Every minute of it was incredible. It is a place worth seeing twice, once at winter and once during spring/summer to fully experience the country's natural beauty.

A land filled with waterfalls that makes a 90s kid such as myself remember TLC's Don't go Chasing Waterfalls, except I literally was. We were able to see three waterfalls of names that were butchered more than once as we tried to pronounce it. We saw, Seljalandsfoss, Skogafoss and Gullfoss. It was a strange experience moving from west to south to east as the environment changed from ice, to patches of green, then back to ice. We stood in between the North American and European tectonic plates in Þingvellir, Almannagjá, a bucket list item that has finally been crossed out without much awareness of it until we read a manuscript.

The we made our way to colder regions, where mammoth glaciers carved the land and open flat lands that make one feel as though they are at another planet. Only things of sci-fi movies I suppose.

Glacier Lagoon. How I wish we had better luck. The massive ice blocks on the shorelines of Crystal Black Beach only served as a tease of what could not be. Our tour guide, regretfully told us that the glacier ice caves were more than 6 feet deep in water and entering would be suicide.

From there we moved our way back to Reykjavik where we spent our last day exploring the city's architecture, urban planning, eating my first crepe (ever), finding charming European-esque cafes, and eating a two course meal at a fancy restaurant only to ask the waiter to put it on a to-go box because we might miss our plane home. One can tell, they were not prepared for such a request and I can only imagine them thinking: Americans, as we packed our fine dining meals in a large plastic bag and rush over to the airport.

#Iceland #Wowair #Travel #waterfalls #adventure