I put up a new album of what I did today...I'm pretty tired and need to get up early for another climbing adventure tomorrow, so I won't add captions until later.
There's 2 sets of pictures in this album: the first are mine, the second are Sonia's - Sonia was the third climber in our group. She's one of the other climbers that Hamik knows in Chamonix - she lives in London working as a nurse, and then takes off to go climbing whenever she can afford to.
Sunday, August 30, 2009
Monday, August 24, 2009
2 new posts, and next week's plans
Since I don't have internet at the new apartment, I wrote 2 updates over the weekend and put them up this morning at work. I don't plan to do anything exciting this week (except starting the write-up for my project, fun...), so this is probably going to be my last post from Iceland.
On Friday (Aug 28), I will fly from Iceland to Paris, and then take the TGV (high-speed train) to Geneva, where I'll spend the night in a hostel. The following morning I'll take the train into Chamonix, and meet up with Hamik at the climbers' hostel there. I'll spend the next couple of days climbing and sightseeing in Chamonix. Then, on Tuesday (Sept 1), I'll take the train down to Lyon and fly from Lyon to Lisbon to visit Joe. There, I'll spend 2 days in Lisbon, and then I fly back to LA on Friday!
I'll have internet periodically all week, so I should at least be putting up pictures as I go.
On Friday (Aug 28), I will fly from Iceland to Paris, and then take the TGV (high-speed train) to Geneva, where I'll spend the night in a hostel. The following morning I'll take the train into Chamonix, and meet up with Hamik at the climbers' hostel there. I'll spend the next couple of days climbing and sightseeing in Chamonix. Then, on Tuesday (Sept 1), I'll take the train down to Lyon and fly from Lyon to Lisbon to visit Joe. There, I'll spend 2 days in Lisbon, and then I fly back to LA on Friday!
I'll have internet periodically all week, so I should at least be putting up pictures as I go.
Reykjavik Marathon and Cultural Festival
When I was on the rafting trip a few weekends ago, I was in such a hurry to dry off and get dressed that I accidentally left my running shoes in the women's changing room (I had brought a pair of sandals, and I was wearing those instead of my shoes). I emailed and called them several times about my shoes, and they assured me that they had looked and my shoes weren't anywhere. I was pretty annoyed, because that week turned out to be really lovely – sunny, not too windy or rainy – and I couldn't go out running to enjoy it. After I had given up all hope of finding my running shoes, and had discovered that new running shoes would cost twice as much as I would pay in the US, I got an email saying that they had found my shoes and that I could pick them up at their office in downtown Reykjavik! I was so excited to get them back, that I decided that I should do something special to celebrate their return. The next weekend was the Reykjavik marathon, and they had a 10 k run that I thought looked like fun, so I signed up!
I arrived a bit early so that I could watch the start of the marathon and half-marathon, which started an hour before the 10k. It's always kind of interesting watching all the little pre-race warmup rituals that people do, and seeing the wide variety of people who are running these races – from the sinewy-looking elite runners, to the team of frumpy middle-aged men and women who were all running in matching sweatsuits. There were enough runners in the marathon and half-marathon to fill the street for about a block – compared to other marathons this is a really tiny one, but it still looked pretty packed. Everyone in the race gets a little timing chip that they attach to their shoe, so that when they pass over the start line, a computer marks your number and time, and then when you come back, it records your personal time as you pass the finish line. That way, it doesn't matter if you start at the end of the pack, and don't get through the gate until a minute or so after the front of the pack.
After an hour of waiting around and warming up, it was time for the 10k to start. I was hoping to finish the race in just under an hour – since I haven't been training seriously at all, I figured I would just go for a comfortable, 10-minute mile pace, and make sure that I'd be able to finish without burning out too early. The first kilometer or so was a complete mess – everyone was constantly passing and being passed as everyone tried to find their correct pace. As it started to become a bit less chaotic, we turned into the neighborhoods west of the University and it seemed like the whole neighborhood had showed up to bang pots, cheer, and blow whistles as we passed! At the halfway point, there was a man with a guitar and an amp and a guy on drums, just jamming for us as we went by. I also kept seeing runners waving to family members watching from the windows of their houses along the route – it seemed like everyone in Reykjavik was either running, or out watching and cheering as we went by. Up to this point the weather had been really nice, almost too hot, and not very windy; but, as we turned back along the peninsula towards downtown, the sky began to darken and the wind picked up. Then, around the 7th kilometer it started to rain pretty hard. I had to run with my eyes closed, only opening them a little to make sure that I wasn't about to step in a deep puddle. Luckily, it eased back to a light drizzle after about 10 minutes. The last kilometer or so was a bit painful because I kept speeding up, thinking that I was almost there, and then realizing that there was another block that I had forgotten about. But, before I knew it, I was speeding up in the final stretch and running under the arch of the finish line.
That afternoon was the Cultural Festival, which basically meant that downtown Reykjavik was turned into a sort of musical carnival. There were bands performing all over the place – everything from punk rock to blues, to some sort of upbeat, traditional sounding polka (?) music. And there were people dancing in cowboy hats, a line of drummers strolling down the street banging all sorts of odd-looking drums, some performance art involving people chasing paper-mache carrots suspended in front of them, and a group of people in matching t-shirts giving out free hugs. After wandering all over town and taking a free rowboat tour of the pond, we left, planning to return to town later to see the fireworks at midnight. I fell asleep early, though and missed them – it had been really a long day.
(Note: I just checked, and my final time was 59:35! So, I achieved my goal of finishing in under an hour)
I arrived a bit early so that I could watch the start of the marathon and half-marathon, which started an hour before the 10k. It's always kind of interesting watching all the little pre-race warmup rituals that people do, and seeing the wide variety of people who are running these races – from the sinewy-looking elite runners, to the team of frumpy middle-aged men and women who were all running in matching sweatsuits. There were enough runners in the marathon and half-marathon to fill the street for about a block – compared to other marathons this is a really tiny one, but it still looked pretty packed. Everyone in the race gets a little timing chip that they attach to their shoe, so that when they pass over the start line, a computer marks your number and time, and then when you come back, it records your personal time as you pass the finish line. That way, it doesn't matter if you start at the end of the pack, and don't get through the gate until a minute or so after the front of the pack.
After an hour of waiting around and warming up, it was time for the 10k to start. I was hoping to finish the race in just under an hour – since I haven't been training seriously at all, I figured I would just go for a comfortable, 10-minute mile pace, and make sure that I'd be able to finish without burning out too early. The first kilometer or so was a complete mess – everyone was constantly passing and being passed as everyone tried to find their correct pace. As it started to become a bit less chaotic, we turned into the neighborhoods west of the University and it seemed like the whole neighborhood had showed up to bang pots, cheer, and blow whistles as we passed! At the halfway point, there was a man with a guitar and an amp and a guy on drums, just jamming for us as we went by. I also kept seeing runners waving to family members watching from the windows of their houses along the route – it seemed like everyone in Reykjavik was either running, or out watching and cheering as we went by. Up to this point the weather had been really nice, almost too hot, and not very windy; but, as we turned back along the peninsula towards downtown, the sky began to darken and the wind picked up. Then, around the 7th kilometer it started to rain pretty hard. I had to run with my eyes closed, only opening them a little to make sure that I wasn't about to step in a deep puddle. Luckily, it eased back to a light drizzle after about 10 minutes. The last kilometer or so was a bit painful because I kept speeding up, thinking that I was almost there, and then realizing that there was another block that I had forgotten about. But, before I knew it, I was speeding up in the final stretch and running under the arch of the finish line.
That afternoon was the Cultural Festival, which basically meant that downtown Reykjavik was turned into a sort of musical carnival. There were bands performing all over the place – everything from punk rock to blues, to some sort of upbeat, traditional sounding polka (?) music. And there were people dancing in cowboy hats, a line of drummers strolling down the street banging all sorts of odd-looking drums, some performance art involving people chasing paper-mache carrots suspended in front of them, and a group of people in matching t-shirts giving out free hugs. After wandering all over town and taking a free rowboat tour of the pond, we left, planning to return to town later to see the fireworks at midnight. I fell asleep early, though and missed them – it had been really a long day.
(Note: I just checked, and my final time was 59:35! So, I achieved my goal of finishing in under an hour)
New apartment for the final days
Because classes begin soon at the university, we had to leave our university housing for this final week and move into an apartment in the neighborhoods near campus. The apartment that they found for us is absolutely lovely – it's spacious, well-lit, and has a microwave and a toaster! Although it doesn't have an internet connection and cell-phone reception keeps disappearing, it is so much nicer than my university apartment that I feel like I'm on vacation. We also have a TV that gets 3 channels: two Icelandic TV channels, and a televangelist channel; and, the second Icelandic channel becomes to static-y to watch after 7 PM or whenever it's windy outside. Last night, I watched a bit of the televangelist channel, and was informed that Kaiser Wilhelm built a gate to hell in Berlin and that the city is the source of all anti-Christian evil in the 20th century. And then they showed a few Christian music videos featuring a creepy-looking guy with a mullet in front of a strange, low-budget set that I think was supposed to be hell – and I think part of the lyrics were: “I'm the spiritual streaker”. Very, very puzzling...
Monday, August 10, 2009
New look, and a few new pictures
After seeing the lovely photo header on my friend Aimee's blog about baffling cafeteria food in Germany, I decided to make a few changes on my own page. I hope you like it! I'll probably be fiddling around with the color scheme for another couple of days, though...
There are some new photos up from our whale-watching/river-rafting tour last weekend. The boys were gone in Germany this week, so Willa and I decided to do a shorter trip. We settled on a "combo tour" to get the most out of our limited time and money - $125 each for an entire day of fun activities, plus full transportation, plus food is a pretty decent deal in Iceland (For comparison, it costs at least $150 a day just to rent a car).
We started our day at the harbor for the whale-watching tour. It was cold and rainy, just like it had been all week, and I wasn't really looking forward to standing still in a boat in the rain for three hours. It's strange - in Reykjavik, jogging along the coast, I don't think I've ever seen a puffin. But, as soon as you get out to the first island in the bay, they are absolutely everywhere! They fly in odd, frantic, looping patterns that makes them look a bit like a cross between a hummingbird and a penguin. Even when they weren't flying, they never seemed to stay still long enough for me to get a good picture - the ones in the ocean kept diving for fish every time I seemed to get my camera focused. But, it was fun to watch the frenzy - there must have been hundreds of them, scooting, and diving, and swooping around the island.
When we arrived out in the deeper waters, it became clear that there was some extremely rich food supply under the surface. Birds were diving and feeding constantly, and the seagulls weren't even fighting over food! Lo and behold, wherever the birds were feeding, we would see the back of a minke whale pop up somewhere nearby and then disappear a few seconds later. Minke whales are the smallest of the baleen whales, only 7-10 m long, and for the most part they seemed to ignore us and keep their distance. Of course, I don't blame them - we were in a large, noisy boat and there was a lot of eating to do. But, it's reassuring that even in a large boat we were able to see 3 or 4 individual whales without really trying very hard - it seems like the population here must be reasonably healthy and not too badly affected by the Icelandic whalers.
After circling around a bit over the feeding grounds and seeing a few glossy-black dorsal fins wink in and out of view, we headed back into the harbor, where it seemed to be getting even colder and rainier. We ate our lunch, and then boarded the van bound for river-rafting, along with a Japanese family and two British medical students who were also here for the summer, doing the same travel plan as us: work/study during the week, travel on the weekends. After a bit of confusion picking up a group of Dutch tourists (there were supposed to be 5 of them, but 9 showed up and they had to call out another van), we arrived in the pouring rain at the river-rafting base camp.
I'm always amazed how warm wetsuits are - once I was wearing my wetsuit, splash jacket, and life vest, it didn't really seem to matter that it was pouring rain outside. I imagine that must be what Aqua-man feels like. Because of all the rain, the river was a bit higher than usual, so the guides assured us that we would have even more fun than usual. Willa and I ended up in a raft with an odd assortment of people - I was stuck behind two kids who were 10 and 12, and kept forgetting to row. The 10-year old kept loudly and confidently declaring that he thought that the guide was trying to make us all fall in the river, and somehow came off as both a wimp and a smart-aleck. And when they did row, they didn't follow the rhythm of the person in front, which made it difficult for me to do anything without hitting their paddles. But, despite their lack of paddling skills, we made it through the rapids and had a lot of fun. It's not that different from those raft rides at amusement parks, except you get wetter, you actually have to paddle, and the scenery is MUCH prettier.
All in all, a fun day :-)
There are some new photos up from our whale-watching/river-rafting tour last weekend. The boys were gone in Germany this week, so Willa and I decided to do a shorter trip. We settled on a "combo tour" to get the most out of our limited time and money - $125 each for an entire day of fun activities, plus full transportation, plus food is a pretty decent deal in Iceland (For comparison, it costs at least $150 a day just to rent a car).
We started our day at the harbor for the whale-watching tour. It was cold and rainy, just like it had been all week, and I wasn't really looking forward to standing still in a boat in the rain for three hours. It's strange - in Reykjavik, jogging along the coast, I don't think I've ever seen a puffin. But, as soon as you get out to the first island in the bay, they are absolutely everywhere! They fly in odd, frantic, looping patterns that makes them look a bit like a cross between a hummingbird and a penguin. Even when they weren't flying, they never seemed to stay still long enough for me to get a good picture - the ones in the ocean kept diving for fish every time I seemed to get my camera focused. But, it was fun to watch the frenzy - there must have been hundreds of them, scooting, and diving, and swooping around the island.
When we arrived out in the deeper waters, it became clear that there was some extremely rich food supply under the surface. Birds were diving and feeding constantly, and the seagulls weren't even fighting over food! Lo and behold, wherever the birds were feeding, we would see the back of a minke whale pop up somewhere nearby and then disappear a few seconds later. Minke whales are the smallest of the baleen whales, only 7-10 m long, and for the most part they seemed to ignore us and keep their distance. Of course, I don't blame them - we were in a large, noisy boat and there was a lot of eating to do. But, it's reassuring that even in a large boat we were able to see 3 or 4 individual whales without really trying very hard - it seems like the population here must be reasonably healthy and not too badly affected by the Icelandic whalers.
After circling around a bit over the feeding grounds and seeing a few glossy-black dorsal fins wink in and out of view, we headed back into the harbor, where it seemed to be getting even colder and rainier. We ate our lunch, and then boarded the van bound for river-rafting, along with a Japanese family and two British medical students who were also here for the summer, doing the same travel plan as us: work/study during the week, travel on the weekends. After a bit of confusion picking up a group of Dutch tourists (there were supposed to be 5 of them, but 9 showed up and they had to call out another van), we arrived in the pouring rain at the river-rafting base camp.
I'm always amazed how warm wetsuits are - once I was wearing my wetsuit, splash jacket, and life vest, it didn't really seem to matter that it was pouring rain outside. I imagine that must be what Aqua-man feels like. Because of all the rain, the river was a bit higher than usual, so the guides assured us that we would have even more fun than usual. Willa and I ended up in a raft with an odd assortment of people - I was stuck behind two kids who were 10 and 12, and kept forgetting to row. The 10-year old kept loudly and confidently declaring that he thought that the guide was trying to make us all fall in the river, and somehow came off as both a wimp and a smart-aleck. And when they did row, they didn't follow the rhythm of the person in front, which made it difficult for me to do anything without hitting their paddles. But, despite their lack of paddling skills, we made it through the rapids and had a lot of fun. It's not that different from those raft rides at amusement parks, except you get wetter, you actually have to paddle, and the scenery is MUCH prettier.
All in all, a fun day :-)
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
The Traditional Icelandic Bank Holiday
Nobody stays home during the first weekend in August. At least, that's what every Icelander keep telling me. And, that if I am under 30 and in Iceland during that weekend, I should go to the Westmann Islands and experience the national festival. But, somehow Willa and I didn't feel too enthused about spending 3 days in a tent on a tiny island off the coast of Iceland with every other 20-something in Iceland, so we booked a trip to north Iceland to see Akureyri (2nd largest city in Iceland, population 17,000) and Mývatn (roughly translates to "Midge Lake". Midges are small flies). Since it is mind-bogglingly expensive to rent a car in Iceland, especially if you are a true American like me who doesn't know how to drive a manual transmission, we flew from Reykjavik to Akureyri. It is quite possible that Air Iceland is the only airline in existence that does not begin checking in passengers until half an hour before the flight, and only begins boarding passengers 10 minutes before the flight. Of course, the planes only seat about 50-60 people, so none of this takes very long. In any case, the whole thing was no hassle at all, especially since we live a block away from the Reykjavik airport.
Akureyri is located at the base of an extremely long fjord, which makes flying into the city especially spectacular - in the approach to the airport, the plane flies down the fjord for a few minutes, level with the valley walls. Willa and I were so excited by the scenery that we decided that it would be worthwhile to walk the 30 minutes from the airport into town with our full packs instead of taking a taxi. We reached the Hotel Edda after a bit of confusion over the map in my travel guide, and settled into our room in the "shared accommodation" section of the hotel, which is essentially a nice dormitory, with shared bathrooms at the end of each hall. We explored the city a bit on the way to dinner (it was about 9PM by this point), but didn't have time to see much. It's definitely a place I would have liked to spend a bit more time exploring, but we were on a tight schedule.
The following morning, we caught the bus for Mývatn, despite accidentally heading to the bus company's garage rather than the actual station. We arrived at the lake around 10 am after a fairly uneventful bus ride, set up our tent in the nice, grassy campground in Reykjahlíð, and then rented a bikes so that we could explore the area. We decided to take the road up the Krafla geothermal area, since it seemed interesting, and I vaguely remembered hearing something about it in a lecture at the summer school. The weather was fantastic - not terribly windy, puffy clouds and bright sunshine - and I took tons of pictures. Although, quite a bit of my picture taking was just a way to disguise the fact that I needed a few breaks while climbing up some of the hills, even on the mountain bike in an embarassingly low gear. My pictures probably do the best job of showing the spectacular scenery and the bleak bizarreness of the Leirhnúkur hot springs and geothermal area, so I'm not really going to bother to explain it. But, in spite of having seen hot springs on nearly every single one of my outings in Iceland, these were by far the weirdest and most alien-looking. In fact, I'm really surprised that they don't film sci-fi movies out there.
After returning to camp and having dinner, we decided to wander a bit around the lake and were rewarded with a rain shower, spectacular clouds and a rainbow. Again, words are probably useless to describe how perfect the lighting was and how magical the whole scene looked, so I'd recommend taking a look at my pictures.
Around dawn (it actually gets properly dark at night now!) it began to rain. For some reason, the rain seemed to bring out all of the birds, who decided that it would be a brilliant idea to waddle around the campground squawking and quacking. Well, that's what it sounded like from inside the tent, anyway. When we finally woke up that morning at 9:30 or so, after being having our sleep disrupted by birds and the loud group of French tourists in the next tent, we decided to take a hike to the Hverfjall tephra crater to pass the time before the bus arrived at 3:30. Even though it drizzled the whole time and we had to take an unofficial shortcut off the crater to save time, it was worth seeing, and an interesting way to spend the morning.
...and that's how I spent my tradtional Icelandic bank holiday weekend!
Interestingly, the Icelandic banks spent the weekend seeking injunctions against the local news agencies to keep them from broadcasting news about a leaked document revealing the extent of insider trading going on last year. I heard about it from this Slashdot story
Akureyri is located at the base of an extremely long fjord, which makes flying into the city especially spectacular - in the approach to the airport, the plane flies down the fjord for a few minutes, level with the valley walls. Willa and I were so excited by the scenery that we decided that it would be worthwhile to walk the 30 minutes from the airport into town with our full packs instead of taking a taxi. We reached the Hotel Edda after a bit of confusion over the map in my travel guide, and settled into our room in the "shared accommodation" section of the hotel, which is essentially a nice dormitory, with shared bathrooms at the end of each hall. We explored the city a bit on the way to dinner (it was about 9PM by this point), but didn't have time to see much. It's definitely a place I would have liked to spend a bit more time exploring, but we were on a tight schedule.
The following morning, we caught the bus for Mývatn, despite accidentally heading to the bus company's garage rather than the actual station. We arrived at the lake around 10 am after a fairly uneventful bus ride, set up our tent in the nice, grassy campground in Reykjahlíð, and then rented a bikes so that we could explore the area. We decided to take the road up the Krafla geothermal area, since it seemed interesting, and I vaguely remembered hearing something about it in a lecture at the summer school. The weather was fantastic - not terribly windy, puffy clouds and bright sunshine - and I took tons of pictures. Although, quite a bit of my picture taking was just a way to disguise the fact that I needed a few breaks while climbing up some of the hills, even on the mountain bike in an embarassingly low gear. My pictures probably do the best job of showing the spectacular scenery and the bleak bizarreness of the Leirhnúkur hot springs and geothermal area, so I'm not really going to bother to explain it. But, in spite of having seen hot springs on nearly every single one of my outings in Iceland, these were by far the weirdest and most alien-looking. In fact, I'm really surprised that they don't film sci-fi movies out there.
After returning to camp and having dinner, we decided to wander a bit around the lake and were rewarded with a rain shower, spectacular clouds and a rainbow. Again, words are probably useless to describe how perfect the lighting was and how magical the whole scene looked, so I'd recommend taking a look at my pictures.
Around dawn (it actually gets properly dark at night now!) it began to rain. For some reason, the rain seemed to bring out all of the birds, who decided that it would be a brilliant idea to waddle around the campground squawking and quacking. Well, that's what it sounded like from inside the tent, anyway. When we finally woke up that morning at 9:30 or so, after being having our sleep disrupted by birds and the loud group of French tourists in the next tent, we decided to take a hike to the Hverfjall tephra crater to pass the time before the bus arrived at 3:30. Even though it drizzled the whole time and we had to take an unofficial shortcut off the crater to save time, it was worth seeing, and an interesting way to spend the morning.
...and that's how I spent my tradtional Icelandic bank holiday weekend!
Interestingly, the Icelandic banks spent the weekend seeking injunctions against the local news agencies to keep them from broadcasting news about a leaked document revealing the extent of insider trading going on last year. I heard about it from this Slashdot story
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