ICELAND: DAYS TWO & THREE

OK, a day without internet access has left me a day behind ... but still travelling through this incredible little country with my Alice (that would be Collette) by my side.

In the past two days we have covered an awful lot of ground. While we're travelling I'm going to keep the posts pretty short; I'm here to enjoy the trip, not to blog. Later, I'll post more detailed logs, including a lot more of Collette's pics and fully edited videos.

See, now you have something to look forward to. Please don't hold your breath waiting. You just look silly that way

Yesterday we went to the west fijords, along the penninsula of Snaefellsnes (yeh, don't try to pronounce any of these words, you'll look sillier than when you do holding your breath) Along the way we saw many of the Icelandic horse. This is a totally unique breed, much protected by the locals, it is absolutely forbidden to import any other horse, including the offspring of Icelandic horses that have gone abroad, so this is about as pure as pure can get. In a country of about 300,000 people, they host horse population of 90,000

Highlights of the day included visit to a shark museum where an old fisherman described his technique for catching, preserving and eating Greenland shark. Yes, we had a taste of it. It was not at all bad, rather tasteless with a chewy consistancy.

Iceland is a crazy country, formed by ocean and glaciers and volcanoes. We nwent on a hike, along a trail, that became a narrow canyon, that widened just a bit, filled with volcanic stones ... very smooth volcanic stones. And metal. Big pieces of twisted rusted metal. These were the remnants of a Russian fishing trawler, smashed and abandoned ... we walked a bit further and we saw why. The canyon became a beach. A beach of stones worn to smoothness by a surf so powerful it had shattered the giant volcanic stones and stranded that fishing boat there forever.

Water and volcanic rock often meet on this island and the union is often, as is the case with passonate lovers, a tad violent. As is this case with water that has smashed right through the stone to form waterfalls.

Today we witnessed another example of the forces that have created this country, that being of the geothermic variety. Iceland is famous for it's hotsprings and we visited the one deemed the hottest. Water coming out of the earth at well over a 100 C, boiling up and creating steam that drifts across the lands and shrouds the visitor in mist.

Gorillas in the mist indeed ...

Tomorrow, whale watching. Aye, Cap'n Ahab.