Fire & Iceland

Photo: Glacier

I had such massive expectations for Iceland without really knowing anything about it... I think I was just excited about being so far away from home in such an alien landscape. It didn't disappoint. I'd love to go back already. Lonely Planet sold it to me in the first sentence: "A land of troll-inhabited mountains and black sand beaches, where calling seabirds are more common than a human voice..."

I stayed in Reykjavik, the capital, in an awesome HI hostel downtown. The temperature was highs of 5-8 degrees C in the daytime and a bit under 0 at night, but with my thermals and a new Icelandic woolly headband I never got cold. I didn't get to see the landscape from above unfortunately because when I flew in and out the clouds were so low and rainy, but I loved driving through it... lumpy black lava fields covered in green moss, valleys where rifts in the earth run with turquoise glacial water, waterfalls, weird rock formations, snowy mountains, tabletop glaciers and grassy fields with stocky wild horses. It was so inspiring; the perfect setting for fantasy novels/ movies. Apparently Tolkien travelled here and I bet it's where he got inspiration for Mordor; volcanoes spewing fire and lava, sliding gravel piles as big as hills, dry rocky lava desert landscape spurting sulphur.

Photo: Strokkur geyser spouting

On my birthday I went on a tour around the Golden Circle region to see the main sights. First was the 'geysir' after which all spouting hotsprings are named. This massive one is blocked up now but the one next to it 'Strokkur' spouts conveniently every seven minutes. Watch the tourists count it down digital cameras at the ready! People get scalded all the time because there's no massive fences or anything around it!

Photo: American continental plate looks like a cliff

We went to Þingvellir national park, which is an area called 'Rift Valley' because it's where the American and European continental plates are being pulled apart 2cm every year. Iceland only exists because of the volcanic activity caused by these plates- the land is made entirely of lava so can't support any metro tunnels or anything. The American continental plate stands high like a cliff (crumbling occasionally) while the European one is sinking down. The whole area is scarred with faults and cracks, filled with melted glacier water. When the plates are pulled far enough apart, volcanoes erupt in a line of fire, filling the crevices up with lava, healing itself until it is pulled too far apart again. So the landscape is constantly changing. This dramatic setting is also the place of the worlds first parliament- the viking AlÞingi first met here in 930.


Photo: Gullfoss

But my favourite stop of the day was at the Gullfoss "golden falls". The flat dry scrubby landscape suddenly cracks open to show a double drop waterfall from a wide river down into a crevasse with rainbows shooting out of it. On my left horizon a flat line of white slices the sky, it's crawling ice. Piles of light lava stones cluster in pyramid mounds. I don't know who put them there or why. Brown, pink and dusty green scrub litter the lava earth. On my right horizon you could film a wild western amongst the weird rocks and horses, and straight ahead the snowy mountain peaks look disarmingly close, but it's just the lack of pollution making visibility amazing. There is no smell; only cold thin moon air, blue sky, biting wind. The only way I could describe it to myself was like being on a farm in the grand canyon on the moon!


That night I took a bus out into the country to hunt for Northern Lights with a guy called Greg from my hostel. Apparently they'd put on a spectacular show the night before (saw other people's photos of them at the hostel!) When planning this trip I'd assumed October was too early to see them but now I was so excited at the possibility as this is one of the things on my list to see before I die! It was an incredibly eerie drive under a full moon and bright Jupiter, with a clear sky, reflected silver lakes, looming lava hills, solitary tiny cottages in the middle of lava fields. We stopped a couple of times when we got away from city street lights and shivered outside watching the sky.. got some cool long exposure shots but no lights showed up. On the way home after midnight we stopped one last time to watch an almost invisible white streak in the sky which shimmered a bit, so soluble it could have been a trick of the eye. The tour leader said this is the lights and to wait and see if they will suddenly 'switch on'.. but they dissolved.

I enjoyed the bus ride though! The landscape played massive tricks on the eyes, no wonder their mythology is full of trolls and elves and witches. The rock shapes, shadows and bright patches and sudden shimmering streams, holes and hills made me think I was seeing things. Loved it.




Went to the Blue Lagoon one day with two English girls. This is a runoff pool from a geothermal water plant.. the water is milky fluorescent blue steaming in the middle of a lava field. Like taking a bath on the moon. The bottom of the lagoon is crumbly lava, gooey clay and slippery rock, and there are boxes of silicon created by the chemicals/ lava which you put on your face! There were steam rooms and the water was around 38 C, hot enough to balance the cold air! We had a really fun afternoon wallowing around, there was even a swim-up bar.

The only traditional Icelandic food I tried was a vegie & lamb soup. Wasn't keen on the idea of whale meat, horse, puffin or rotten shark. Their history is so awful they had to eat anything and everything they could to not starve, as they were neglected by Norway and then Denmark (who ruled them) and didn't allow them to trade. They had infertile lava soil, were ravaged by volcanic eruptions and then epidemics and plagues, and had no way of escaping the island. Life didn't really improve until after WWII.

The kitchen in my hostel was so well equipped, luckily because even though prices in Iceland are 60% lower than they were before they went bankrupt, eating out would still be too expensive! Downtown Reykjavik is a ghost town all nights of the week except Friday & Saturday, when the whole city population does a sort of pub crawl. It doesn't start until about midnight and pumps on to 6am but we all went out too early from the hostel! I met some nice people including Melbourne girls from Mont Albert and others who went to Carey. All travelling independantly. Had to go to Reykjavik to meet them? Everyone has joked to me that there must be no-one in Melbourne at the moment, they are all over the world.



The cemetery was really cool too. I'm kinda creepy and like seeing how people bury their dead. Vietnam was all pastel colours and rectangle tombs, Bosnia had tall skinny posts, France had mini gothic churches with stained glass windows, and Iceland had a mossy, overgrown, autumn leaves dripping and bright red berries on the ground kind of scene. The trees grew straight out of the graves and tangled overhead, and the headstones were damp and mossy.

I went whale-watching one day and it wasn't much fun. My feet got soaked straight away and went numb with the icy wind whipping straight through my shoes, same with my gloves. But luckily the huge oompa loompa suit kept the rest of me warm! It was rough out at sea and impossible to see whales with rain blowing into my eyes. Saw some porpoises though. As we didn't see anything else we got free tickets to repeat the trip later in the week when the weather was better but unfortunately I was leaving the next day! There was so much more to see that I'll have to go back one day for, with a bigger budget or my own car!

PS In Iceland you can have hot showers for as long as you want because it practically comes straight out of the ground. And only smells a little like sulphur :P

Germany: Fussen & Munich

Caught about 7 or 8 trains from Interlaken to Fussen in southern Germany which is a hole and doesn't deserve its own post except I got to see mad King Ludwig's Neuschwanstein castle (Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle in Disneyland is based off it.) It was freezing cold and raining, the institution woops I mean hostel was full of school kids and nothing in town was open. Caught a train to Munich.

Munich's hostels booked out about a year ago because this is the opening week of Oktoberfest! So I'd organised to stay in the Thalkirchen camping ground with a company called 'Pillow' who provided tents and sleeping mats. Luckily Flick was camping too, but she was with the Topdeck company. The camping ground had thousands and thousands of tents from companies like Busabout, Contiki, PP Travel, Fanatics etc as well as people just camping by themselves, and it was a massive party! I'm sure there was confusion caused by rows and rows of identical tents in this tent city.

But I learnt camping without a sleeping bag in Munich autumn is COLD! I wore all my clothes, with a scarf wrapped around my head, and piled random things on top of me like bathers and dresses and was still freezing. Fail. People were complaining of the cold from inside their sleeping bags... b******s

The actual Oktoberfest grounds were completely different from what I expected! I'd just expected beer halls. But it was a real carnival with rollercoasters and ferris wheels, so many food stalls and souvenir & toy stalls, kids and families everywhere. Flick, her friend Pam who is now nannying in Istanbul, my tent mate Wendy from Sydney and myself went in early to line up to get a seat inside a beer hall, but it filled up so quickly we ended up sitting outside all day! We were so amazed at the strength of the bar girls who managed carrying 10 steins all at once when we struggled to lift one! Lots of girls were wearing the traditional durndl dresses (and lots were wearing skimpy Ebay equivalents) and the guys were in leiderhosen.

That night trying to get home was a nightmare... the subways were all full of blood and vomit from drunken injuries, there were smashed people leering and falling all over the place... it was gross and just ridiculous when they were all still in costume and looked like little boys. What made it worse was that when I printed my Ryanair e-ticket at an internet cafe on the way home, luckily Flick and Pam pointed out that Memingem airport is not Munich airport!! Thanks for making that obvious Ryanair! So that was almost a disaster, I would have gone to the wrong airport early the next morning. And Memingem is so much further away I realised I'd have to get up in the freezing cold and leave the campsite by 4am to get there. Yay. Good planning Jess (remember I rushed this booking the day I started Sail Croatia!) New rule for myself: no more early flights. You'd think I would have learnt this by now, but they suck!

Said bye to Flick who I will see next in Peru! And to Pam, who I'd just met but got along with really well, hopefully I will see her again one day if she ever comes back to Australia! Wendy gave me an extra jumper to sleep in but I still died. And I've blocked the freezing early morning debacle from my memory, but thanks to the girls I got to the correct airport on time for my flight to London.

Switzerland: Interlaken

Flew to Zagreb, then to Zurich then caught three trains to Interlaken hating life! For the next few days I was just sick in bed, the hostel was pretty chilled out with nightly DVDs on tv, and I bumped into a mate from college in the hostel (Tim Young.) I walked a bit around one of the lakes with some Californian girls one day, and went paragliding on my last day which was such an amazing peaceful flying feeling, seeing snowcapped mountains and glacial lakes.

Interlaken is a bit of an extreme sports centre; the hostel helps book everything from skydiving, bungy jumping, canyoning, rafting, hang-gliding, etc. I had my heart set on skydiving but wasn't well enough (ears were too blocked!) so contented myself with paragliding and watching everyone else's videos on the TV when they got home from bungy or skydiving! The bungy looked terrifying. It was off a Verzasca Dam wall that's in a James Bond movie (Goldeneye I believe) and the fall is 230m. Youtube it. The videos of backpackers jumping were so scary I'd much rather sky dive!!!

It was weird coming out of Eastern Europe, and walking around town realising that this place was never bombed, never communist.. Always neutral. Everything was beautiful from the cows with cowbells, wooden chalets with overflowing flower window boxes, paragliders twirling overhead, Toblerone mountains around. But it was very expensive. I liked how the Swiss mixed languages mid-sentence as they were speaking, and ended transactions with "danke-merci-auf wiedersehen-ciao!"

Croatia

Picture: Split (taken from Imogen's apartment)
I took an eleven hour overnight bus from Ljubljana to Split, Croatia. It was pretty comfy as far as busses go: had the seat next to me free and the aircon even worked and could be turned off! I got about four hours solid sleep with two sleeping tablets and then dozed on and off for the rest of the time; we arrived at 5.45am at Split and the sun wasn't up yet.

I read in the bus station until the sun came up about 6.30am turning the harbour pink, and then set off to find my hostel in the bright, quiet marble esplanades. Cafes and market stalls were beginning to be set up, and the fish market flooded the street with my favourite smell :S

I'd arrived a day early in Split to recover from the bus ride and get myself in order before my Sail Croatia cruise started the next day. So I slept for a few hours in the hostel, and then met a Melbourne girl called Imogen in the street and ended up hanging out with her all day; exploring the old town of Split, buying beach towels and sunscreen (she was off on a cruise tomorrow too, but a different company to me) and hanging out in her separate apartment that her hostel had shifted her to. This seems quite common in Croatia; you book through a hostel and when you arrive they transfer you to a random apartment that they lease, far away from the actual hostel. I would be freaked out not knowing who else has a key, but this happened to lots of backpackers I met and nothing bad had happened.

Back in my dorm that night I met a Sydney girl called Flick who was heading off on Sail Croatia tomorrow too, but on a different boat to me. She's been nannying in the UK for two years and will be volunteering in Peru with the same company as me, at the same time! But she will be in Lima and I'll be in Cusco. So I think it's fate we met here.

I had to get up early on the Saturday to organise everything that I didn't do yesterday like booking important flights and Oktoberfest accomodation. (Flashforward to Munich and massive regret I rushed booking this outward flight.. you'll find out why later!) But then it was time for Sail Croatia! Flick and I went down to the harbour together and hopped on our separate boats, not knowing if we'd see each other again this week.

What an incredible week. I made some really great friends on my boat (Omladinac) and saw Flick every day too when our boats all pulled up together at harbours so I was friends with people on her boat too (Penelopa.) Our route was Split- Hvar- Trstenik- Dubrovnik- Korcula- Makarska- Split. Some of these are islands and some are spots on the mainland down the Adriatic/ Dalmation coast. The boats sailed in the mornings with swim stops where we could jump off the top deck, then anchored in the afternoons so we could explore, eat dinner and then go out on land.


The Adriatic sea was like glass (clearer water I have ever seen!) and so salty that we could stay afloat with our heads above water without paddling. It was so bizarre. The hills were hazy and dry with little villages and terraced vineyards and picturesque coves with pebbly beaches (it felt weird that we were in the ocean all week and there was no sand in our towels/ beds/ rooms!)


My highlights of the week were:
Dubrovnik with its marble old city surrounded by tall walls; we had enormous gelatis and had a swim in the most perfect water off the rocky walls.

Jumping off the boat into the refreshing (read Freezing) water to wake up every morning.

Seeing an incredible pink sunset over Makarska

Going out in a nightclub in a cave, then swimming in the sea out the front which was as clear as bath water, to cool down.

And just bonding with the same people for a whole week. I became so close with Flick that people thought we were friends from 'before', and others especially my cabin mate an english girl called Michelle, Oli from Sydney, Mark from NZ, Connor from Townsville, Francis and Mike from NZ. We had so much fun every day and night even when the weather turned and we were stuck inside the boat playing 500!

Picture: Flick & I

On the last day I took an optional day excursion to Bosnia, to a town called Mostar. I'm really glad I did it despite the early start after about 2 hours sleep. Bosnia was suddenly so Eastern and Turkish influenced with mosques, the blue evil eye symbol on everything, turkish delight and turkish coffee. This Yugoslavian history is so recent (10 years!) but I hadn't seen much evidence of it in Slovenia or Croatia. Mostar's buildings were absolutely riddled with bullet holes and half the city still needed to be rebuilt. The international community had chipped in to pay for the rebuilding of their main attraction- the old bridge- after it was bombed in 1993.

This is the famous bridge that young boys are trained for life to be able to swan-dive off (20 something metres) into a quickly flowing river with hidden caves and rocks in it. Tourists and untrained locals die every year trying to jump it! But the day I was there nobody was jumping.

Most of my friends were too tired to go out that last night back in Split so we just went out for a nice dinner (no more pizza was the general consensus.. we are very close to Italy and the menus reflect this.)
That night I got the full shivery fevery aching flu so that was fun but at least I made it til the end!

My luck had run out in Croatia. Had a horrible sick day shivering and sweating in a dorm after I got off the boat, then fell down a staircase, then got bothered by a creepy old man. But had dinner with Flick and a few others who were still around, then went straight back to bed before getting up at 4am for Travel Day of Death.

**lots more Croatia pics on Flickr**