July 2007 saw a last minute rather whirlwind of a short trip to Iceland, fantastic place to visit. I don't normally put such short trips on the website but thought Iceland warranted a mention!
Iceland (rather deservedly) has a reputation for being expensive, thanks to Google and a bit of digging around I managed to get a bargain as far as flights and accommodation, normally I 
don’t book packages but this one was too good to miss!
Flying into Reykjavik at midnight I was greeted by daylight and a fantastic red sky! It wasn’t quite 24 hours daylight but it wasn’t far off, just going duskish for 2 or 3 hours in the early hours.
Typically I wanted to do as much as possible: Reykjavik is great fun and really easy to get around as its quite small as far as cities go, its fairly quiet on week nights but makes up for it over the weekend, this, combined with sight seeing trips was responsible for my severe lack of sleep!
I did the classic Golden Circle tour, which visited some stunning waterfalls, amazing geysers and also a geothermal plant – Iceland doesn’t heat hot water up in tanks as we do back in England, instead they get hot water straight from the earth which is fed back to the city through enormous lengths of pipes and pumped straight into houses and hotels.
One day I spent visiting the South of Iceland, sight seeing on the Jokulsarlon Glacial Lagoon, has been the setting for a couple of James Bond Films among others, it’s not hard to see why!
Keeping myself amused shooting lumps of ice on the Glacier
A short flight on another day took me to the north where I went whale watching from the fishing village of Husavik, hmm forgot to take my motion sickness tablets and didn’t feel too good, considering I am a diver I am really crap on boats and it was a timely reminder to pack plenty for my Galapagos trip as two of the dive sites I am visiting are 600 miles out to sea (and its reputed to be a rough crossing!). It was a lovely sunny day, apparently the weather is often better in the North and this was certainly the case on this day as when I returned back to the city it was raining and had been doing so most of the day.
I think one of the highlights of the trip was seeing the Puffins; they are complete clowns and very entertaining to watch. Unfortunately on the day I was attempting to take pics of them, the light was bad, plus as it was Monday I was struggling to focus in general never mind take photos of Puffins zipping around from the back of a moving boat in choppy water! Puffins really are incredible birds, they dive down to 60m to catch fish, and have even been spotted as far down as 100m. Imaging a diver spotting a bird at 100m; he would definitely think he had a touch of narcosis! They are about 10” high and fly at speeds of 55mph, flapping their wings at 400 times per minute, hence my difficulties in getting some good shots of them!
But to sum it all up, a great short trip, even though I came back in need of a holiday! Its only a short flight from the UK so I might well head out there again at some point, having sussed the place out and picked up plenty of info I know where and what I want to do on a future visit, plus with a bit of inside info although its not possible to do Iceland on the cheap its certainly feasible to slice off a chunk of expenditure.
