A Zodiac ride around Jökulsárlón Glacial Lagoon at the head of Breiðamerkurjökull Glacier which comes from a massive but shrinking Vatnajökull ice field in south-eastern Iceland is worth whatever it costs and they have lots of extra zeros on the krona to stop you from working that out easily. The glacier is retreating at an alarming rate but of course there is no climate change or at least none that humans are responsible for and the likes of Tony Abbott and the Bum Trumpet will tell you that for nothing and do so quite LOUDLY!
The lagoon came into existence during the 1930s when the glacier retreated from the sea. It's rather large today and growing rapidly as the glacier continues to shrink. But I'll be dead before climate change gets too much worse and since I have no children or grandchildren I’ve decided to adopt the prevailing laissez faire attitude and just not give an airborne act of copulation.
The scenery began to change at the glaciers as we continued on in our clockwise semi-circular trek around the island. The western end of Vatnajökull marks the transition from steep coastal mountains and deep fjords to broad, flat and fairly arid coastal plains that are dissected by gushing streams of snow melt. The aridity gradually gives way to fields of silage that is harvested to feed the sheep, cows and horses which are all stabled in barns over winter - or at least the ones that aren't sent to the knackery in autumn. You can buy pony meat in the supermarkets - equine lamb.
Peter and I ventured out on our own for dinner in the black sand coastal town of Vik. Flash hotel tucker is quite nice and extremely well presented but it's also extremely pricey - Rockpool pricey! A local restaurant was half the cost, albeit with half the space, but it had everything that was on the hotel menu and then 20 or so other things.
Puffin Tip #1
A good puffin-spotting location is around the south-eastern town of Vik but don't set your heart on it. If you seek out their flight paths you can watch them buzz overhead like hell-for-leather flying penguins but if you want is a close up and personal then best hook up with a tour operator.
The coastal plain widened and became greener after Vik and I started to wonder if there may be an Icelandic word for verdant after all but I suspect that green is about as far as it goes.
Waterfalls, or foss, tumble from the sharp uplift above the coastal plain every few kilometres, some of them quite spectacular, none of them unremarkable. There is even one you can walk behind provided you don't mind getting terribly wet. The roads improve at this point since it is within day-tripper distance from Reykjavik. Farms present as more affluent and often have clusters of smart little tourist cabins which would provide a considerable boost to income through summer.
Geyser Tip #1
If you're after proper sulphur-belching, mud-bubbling, truly spurty geysers best visit New Zealand.
There are a lot more tourists closer to Reykjavik, and I mean tourists, not travellers although you do happily encounter the latter from time to time. Between this point of the journey and the Blue Lagoon spa on our final day I had a shocking urge to slap anyone with a shrill American accent. It used to be old codgers in caps emblazoned with the names of US Navy ships but these days the young ones are far worse, much more penetrating and numbingly dumb!
I have a passion for democracy, genuine democracy not the Trumped up redneck xenophobic populism that is currently sweeping the world, so I've long been intrigued by a place known as Þingvellir (Thingvellir).
In fact, it has fascinated me ever since I first learned about it in Jimmy Dolan's amazing Viking Era course at UNE in 1977. Þingvellir - literally "Parliament Plains" - was the site of the first Alþing (Althing) or Parliament in 930. Chieftain and farmers from all over Iceland gathered at Lögberg (the Law Rock) each year to make and recite the law, pass judgements, make common decisions and settle disputes.
Through the Vikings, Cnut in particular, this very first parliament became the origin of the Westminster System of government which operates in Australia today. The Congressional System and most other forms of Western government also owe their origins to the Alþing at Þingvellir. I was overawed to stand before the Law Rock and look out across the plain, the birthplace of actual democracy - forget about the Greeks, they just gave us the vocabulary and souvlaki.
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