So last night was lots of fun. Marleen and I were on too much of a budget to drink (it's like $15 Aussie for a beer here - stuff that!) so we had two pepsis for the whole evening haha.
Went to a local bar called Lebowski and met Ronnie and Christien there from the walking tour. The four of us along with the whole packed bar and people on the street watched the Eurovision Song Contest final! It's quite big here. Usually I watch at home on delay and you already know who's won, but finally this year I got to experience it live! We watched all 27 acts. Some were bloody awful (Slovenia, Belgium, a few others) and some were amazing (Sweden, Israel and of course Australia!) and some were just plain weird. The ones that drove me nuts were the parade of wafer thin blonde women who all looked the same and performed the same types of songs with similar dance moves. I think they were Greece, somewhere else and Russia in particular. She had an ok voice but was just so fake!!
I'm probably biased but Guy Sebastian did so well. His song was catchy, his clothes were good, his backup dancers did well. I had my little Aussie flag with me and our table cheered so loud when he came on. Everyone around us told me they loved his performance too!! Then the voting lines opened (normally on delay I skip that) and the voting announcements began after thirty minutes. It was all so political, it's obvious which countries have alliances and promise each other votes. Pretty funny really!
We did so well!! We came fifth out of 27 and most countries who voted gave us some votes. Sweden and Austria gave us 12 (the best you can get). We cheered and cheered, and it soon became a race between Russia and Sweden. The Russian girl literally cried the whole time so the bar soon turned against her (we were already at our table!) and barracked hard for the Swedish guy. He eventually won and there were three Swedish people in the bar so we all went crazy cheering and high fiving them! The Swedish guy had a good song with cool effects, and he was also very easy to look at as Marleen put it haha!! We headed back about 11.30pm after a really fun night, we were tired.
Up at 7 this morning, got ready and met my bus out front for my full day Golden Circle tour. The Golden Circle is an area in central west Iceland with volcanoes, hot springs and waterfalls.
Our guide's name was Anna and she gave us some interesting info on the bus...there were no trees in Iceland when it was settled in 871. They were planted later! It's so cold here still even though it's May that it snowed last Thursday. There is a volcanic eruption in Iceland on average every four years and 1/4 of Iceland is a volcanic zone. It can get as cold as -38 Celsius in winter here!!!!! There are hardly any native animals here, pretty much the arctic fox, the mink, the reindeer. Apart from that everything was introduced! There are no mozzies - love it.
We quickly drove out of tiny Reykjavik and our first stop was the Hellishedi Geothermal Power Plant. It was built in 2006 and is situated next to an active volcano that last erupted 2000 years ago. They use geothermal energy (heat from the earth) by drilling down for hot water that's in contact with volcanic heat and and utilise it to send hot water to 99.9% of the houses on Reykjavik and the rest of Iceland. The hot water travels to Reykjavik via 27km long insulated pipes. In Reykjavik itself the pipe network is 3000km long, the same as travelling from here to Milan. The plant produces 300 megawatts of power which is double the needs of Reykjavik.
We kept driving and it started to rain. We passed through a few small towns and could see steam rising from geysirs around them, as well as lots of hot houses.
We then arrived at Kerid crater. It's 6500 years old and 55m deep. The colours in the soil and water here were really cool, and we were lucky enough that the sun came out. The view up the top was amazing, but boy was it cold! Glad I wore my thermals, scarf, gloves and hat today. And to think it's nearly "summer"!!
Faxi Waterfall was our next stop. It was a small fresh water waterfall. Quite pretty! Nearby we went to the geysir area, mainly to see the 25-35m high geysir called Strokkur. I can very clearly remember standing at the geysirs in Bolivia and thinking "in May I'll see more in Iceland" - cannot believe how quickly that four months went. Insane.. The geysir was really impressive. I sat down and ate my bread and Philadelphia (cheese slices cost $18 Aussie for a pack of 10 - no exaggeration, I'm being dead serious..!) and it went off a few times, one time was more massive than all the others.
A French girl from my tour walked with me after this and we walked up a high nearby and had a fantastic view. It was so windy though, I've never experienced wind like it before. We got to the top and the view was great. Iceland's landscape has so many different soils and colours. Ellie (the French girl) took a photo of me and as she did the geysir went off in the background - timed that well!!!
Next we set off down the road to Gullfoss (Golden Falls) - a huge waterfall! For some silly reason I was picturing it covered in snow due to friends having been here in March, so I guess in that aspect I was a bit disappointed but it was still nice! You could see glaciers lit up by the sun in the distance. I walked on the lower and upper paths to see the falls. They fall 32m and are situated in a 70m deep canyon. On average 109 cubic metres of water flows through every second, but in times of heavy rain it can increase to 2000 cubic metres per second!
Our last stop of the day was to Pingvellir National Park. It is one of three national parks in Iceland and is the oldest! It is home to the mid Atlantic ridge - the ridge between the Eurasian and the North American tectonic plates. Each year they move 2cm further apart (or 20km over a million years). We stopped to take a picture of the Eurasian plate, and the surrounding lake and mountains were stunning in the sunshine! Then we drove and walked through the park to the North American plate (the two plates are about 2km apart) and walked around for an hour. The National Assembly was held in this parkland every June for two weeks from the year 931 to 1264. They used to talk into the plate wall and the sound would echo to the crowd! Had a look around and again it was beautiful in the sunshine. I'm so lucky, most people I know who've been here said it rained the whole time. I've had so much sunshine!!
Tonight I'm going to chill out a bit. I'm really tired and run down and have another big day tmro!
Love to all
Claire
Xoxox
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