Return of the Native 2 - Iceland 1

Lin, Peter and I had a wet drive from County Durham to the Manchester Airport Inn but sang 'We're All Going On a Summer Holiday' nevertheless. When we arrived in the early afternoon the temperature was 16', exactly the same as it was in wintery Sydney, except it was nighttime there. Lin's cousin Margaret took the train up from London to meet us and next morning we all hopped into a cab and headed to the airport for our flight to Iceland.

We left England's green and pleasant fields well behind because looking down from the air on Iceland it's barren, Sharon. It was better once on the ground but I doubt there is a word for verdant in the Icelandic language. There are lupins galore, this being the season, and lots of lava flows in the east. The one hour bus ride between the international and domestic airports took me back to Savai'i in Samoa without the coconut palms, heat or humidity.

That bus ride with a change en route had us on the edges of our seats because the plane in was late and we had a tight onward connection but we made it onto the 40 seater for the 50 minute flight to Egilsstaðir in the easternmost part of Iceland where we began our Iceland adventure.

Egilsstaðir is the main service centre for the east which doesn't mean it's big, there are only a couple of thousand residents. The airport stayed open late to set us up with our very comfortable and rather roomy Kia Sorento. In fact the Europcar chap was the one who locked the building as we left for the 2km drive to the flashest the hotel I've ever stayed in. I tend to judge holiday accommodation by its potential for conversation into aged care facilities and I would happily spend my terminal years at the Gistihúsið Lake Hotel, although probably not in Iceland.

Don't get me wrong here, Iceland is amazing but it's currently summer and if I had just one word to describe the place that word would be 'bleak'. It's a fantastic to visit but I certainly wouldn't want to live here. Much of the landscape is alpine without the altitude and trees are very scarce although an arboretum has been established on the shores of the loch-like Lagarfljót which we looked out on from our first hotel. It's so loch-like it has its very own Loch Ness Monster, a kind of gigantic worm, or so legend has it.

After circumambulating Lagarfljót, and attempting to climb up to one of Iceland's many waterfalls, we headed over the snow covered tabletop mountains to the coastal town of Seyðisfjörður where Peter found himself locked inside the toilet at the visitors' centre when the lights were suddenly turned off and the whole place shut down for the day. Lin had to chase after the proprietor who was by then headed off across the car park towards home, wherever that was.

Unless you travel by boat there is only one way in and out of so back we went to Egilsstaðir then onto our next overnight stay in Fáskrúðsfjörður. The drive was was a taste of the Canadian Rockies, not quite as grand but it certainly brought back memories. And the Fosshotel which is right on the fjord is truly the stuff of memories. The the Gistihúsið Lake Hotel rapidly faded to second position as the Fosshotel became my newest and flashest ever overnight stay. Our beautifully finished rooms opened out onto decks over the water where eider ducks splashed about and preened themselves for hours on end. The restaurant wasn't cheap but it was outstanding with the best langoustines yet.

Breakfast was superb and checkout at noon. I didn't want to leave either the table or the room but we had places to go and things to see.

We headed back through the 6km long Fáskrúðsfjarðargöng Tunnel to the town of Reyðarfjörðurt that we'd passed by the previous day. This is where Lin's father was stationed in WWII during Britain's friendly invasion of Iceland which staved off a far less friendly one by Germany and kept the shipping lanes to North America open right throughout the war. Lin was keen to visit and the small military museum there is a storehouse of history. We also had a bit of fun communicating with the three elderly women running the place, none of whom spoke English but we liked them because they let us all in as 67+ seniors.

Now how many of you have driven through the Fáskrúðsfjarðargöng Tunnel even once? Well I'm very happy to boast that I've now done it not once, not twice, but three times and I'm mightily impressed with Icelandic engineering ability.

On we went through another tunnel then in and out of fjords and past stratified, uplifted and tilted mountainsides that truly had me wishing I'd studied geology. The scree at the foot of them was sometimes hundreds of metres in height, enough basalt to reballast every railway line on Earth.

Night 3 was at another Flosshotel near Höfn which was fine but we were spoiled absolutely rotten on our previous two nights. We did have distant views of the gigantic Vatnajökull Icecap though, or at least we did once the rain and mist had cleared, but half the disjointed bathroom was in the main part of the room which was a bit odd, especially given that it looked like a kitchen. An architect and an interior designer clearly cooked that idea up over a long and very boozy lunch.

I managed to put aside my fascination with 24 hour sunshine and close the block out curtains that night. So much light does not bode at all well for sleep.