Monday, April 29, 2013

[SPONSORED POST] A checklist for unforgettable skiing


Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Catherine Lavinia for Neilson Holidays.

All holidays start the same way – on the day of departure, there’s always a niggling feeling that you’ve forgotten something. Whether it’s something that missing from your suitcase or worrying that you’ve left the hall light on, it’s easier to think with a straight head if you don’t panic. Once you’re at the airport, what’s done is done – there’s no going back now, so let’s hope you have everything you need in your bags!

When you’re having a skiing holiday, there are some items that are absolutely essential. Ski lift passes, equipment and appropriate kit for the slopes are some of the things you absolutely mustn’t forget – your time on the piste just won’t be the same without them.

Once you have booked yourself in to one of the catered ski chalets in your chosen resort, the best thing you can do is write a checklist of essential items which you can refer to when it comes to packing your bag. This list should include the following crucial items:

  • Lift Passes – While these are available to buy in the resort, pre-booking ski lift passes in advance can save you a great deal of money!

  • Ski & Equipment Hire – If you don’t have your own kit, ski and equipment hire is vital. Specialist fitters will measure you so that your boots, skis and snowboard are all snug and comfortable, giving you the tools you need to enjoy the slopes in style.

  • Ski School – Although most resorts offer skiing lessons, try taking advantage of deals by keeping an eye out ahead of time.

  • Ski Gear – From thermal layers to salopettes and a ski jacket, ensuring you’re warm and protected on the piste is crucial. Take some sunnies or goggles too to keep the sun’s rays out of your eyes. Also pack some Sunblock and SPF lip balm – it’s amazing how strong the sun is, even when it’s snowing!

Most of all, look forward to having an unforgettable time on the mountains – it’ll be worth it.

Friday, April 26, 2013

Photo Friday: Jökulsárlón, Iceland


In the glow of morning light, with the sun starting to peek out from over the horizon, Iceland is only just waking up - the air is still cold from the night, you're still freezing, but everything is beautiful as Iceland always is.


Tucked away behind a small hill just by the side of the Ring Road in South-East Iceland lies Jökulsárlón, a glacier lagoon formed by the melting of chunks of Breiðamerkurjökull, a glacier tongue of Vatnajökull.

Interestingly, Jökulsárlón didn't exist 80 years ago - it started forming in 1934 as a result of environmental changes (*cough* global warming *cough*). The calving and melting of icebergs from Breiðamerkurjökull led to the formation of this lake, with a maximum depth of 220 metres deep, and all its floating icebergs!

Jonna, Josh and me - three red-nosed reindeer.
Jökulsárlón was actually surprisingly hard to find, given that it's a popular tourist spot - we missed it no fewer than three times, because it isn't clearly marked on the road - you'll have to slow down and look out for the Jökulsá river to find this gem. We wound up simply following all the other cars!


Everything was utterly silent in the morning, and as I listened I could hear the creaking of ice straining to break away from the glacier. It seemed at first completely unnatural - like the sound of an old rusty door, almost as if something awful was going to happen. And then again, and again, the only curious noise in all of the morning.

I'd never heard anything like that ever come from anything natural, and for a moment I thought the sound was of the earth going to split in two!

Crystal clear glacier blue icebergs.
Jonna looking totally at home in the snow.
Because everything was so cold and quiet, imagine my surprise when I noticed a tiny little bobbing head coming up from the water of the lagoon!



I know what you're thinking - seals in a glacier lagoon?! But there they were, with their little bobby heads and everything! Such adorable, cute little creatures. We also saw some birds that were either ducks or skuas just chilling out on a glacier (ha ha ha!)



Because glaciers are freshwater, you might think that any lake formed by them has to be freshwater too. In the case of most glacier melt, rivers and waterfalls, this is usually true - drinkable freshwater is abound in Iceland and I did drink from a fair number of natural rivers and streams.

But you would be in for a rude shock if you decided to take a swig from Jökulsárlón, because this lake opens out into the Atlantic ocean, meaning it mixes with salt water and isn't at all very tasty. (Josh now knows this first hand, since he filled up a bottle with Jökulsárlón water and proceeded to splutter and cough with how awful it tasted!)


And lastly, because I never know to conclude these Photo Fridays, I leave you with this picture of Jonna and me messing around on an old log that was just lying around. As all kids do. Well. Not quite a kid, but I'm convinced that I'm still young enough to play around and balance on logs without needing to feel guilty about it.


Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Listen to Tuesday: The Kite Runner OST

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If you're into film or film adaptations of books, then you will no doubt have heard of The Kite Runner, the book by Khaled Hosseini about two Afghan boys. Poignant and haunting, it follows the story of a Pashtun and his Hazara servant and friend in Kabul, and is a sure cry-fest.

As an accompaniment to the 2007 film adaptation by Marc Forster, Alberto Iglesias's music works brilliantly. It is a perfect introduction into world music, with a mixture of modern and traditional sounds. A mixture of traditional instruments with modern techniques and even some electronic, synthesised elements keeps the music accessible while at the same time maintaining the traditional atmosphere.

With melodies and themes often in guitar or familiar strings, but with a rhythmic background of tabla, the listener is able to easily follow each tune on the soundtrack while being drawn into the atmosphere of Kabul, Afghanistan.

In one of the ending scenes, the melody of Fly A Kite appears - one of the most moving melodies on the soundtrack. It begins slow and calm, with a single melody that sings simply of the message of hope. It is the sort of tune that brings a smile to the face, the purest kind of simple hope and end to all strife, mirroring perfectly the ending of the film's story.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qekebIvXB5A

Listen on YouTube or buy on Amazon.

Sunday, April 21, 2013

Lava caving in Leiðarendi, Iceland


There are a lot of volcanoes in Iceland. In fact, the entire island is made of volcanic material. When volcanoes erupt and there are lava flows, sometimes the lava cools in a funny sort of manner to create lava caves.

When I think of caves, I mostly think of huge caverns like the sort in Journey to the Centre of the Earth - like the Divača Caves in Slovenia, for example. So I didn't know what a lava cave would be like, only that I wasn't particularly expecting huge massive chambers hollowed out by rivers and water.


It turns out that a lava 'tube' would be a more appropriate word to describe lava caving - it's formed by the horizontal movement of lava, becoming tube-like. My guide was David, a native Icelander with years of snorkelling, diving and caving experience under his belt (a real outdoorsy type!) and a fantastic sense of humour. He's also possibly one of the coolest people I met in Iceland - amazingly nice, full of jokes, and just all-around awesome.

Oh, and he also took Tom Cruise out on a diving tour in Silfra once. D'oh.

We head out in a 4x4 to Leiðarendi, which is only 30 minutes out of Reykjavík - I've learned by now that the Icelandic landscape changes so quickly that you go from big city to utter wilderness in no time at all!


On the drive towards Leiðarendi, we stop by the side to check out some fish being dried. Iceland is an island, so there's a lot of fish around. Interestingly, a lot of the dried fish is exported to Nigeria. The pungent smell of fish is very pungent, but at the same time it's oddly photogenic - according to David, there are sometimes even photoshoots for fashion magazines and things like that here!


David holding the head of a huge monk fish.
But we aren't here today to look at drying fish, so we continue driving on toward Leiðarendi.

The landscape around Leiðarendi is what I call 'typical Icelandic' landscape, which really means gorgeous mountains and lava rock, dusted lightly with snow. "Lightly dusted" is good for Iceland, because just the week before there'd been a massive storm in the region!

Getting into the lava tube is tricky, because in late winter there's still a lot of ice around the entrance. I gave up on climbing in and decided to just slide all the way down. There's a lot of collapsed rock around - "A result of the cooling phase of lava tube formation," says David.


One of the girls asked if it was likely that more rock would fall while we were inside the cave. David said the chances were slim.

Well, at least I knew that there was only a slim chance of me being trapped inside a lava tube in Iceland! (insert nervous laughter here.)

Inside the lava tube, it goes dark very quickly. There's maybe 50 metres of light before it becomes pitch black, so the headlamps on our helmets were particularly useful. It feels like real exploration because we are so alone in the cave, and we have to climb through so many collapsed portions and over rocks. There's still moisture even inside the cave, so it's not just sharp broken lava rock but also ice that we have to watch out for.



Leiðarendi is Icelandic for end-of-the-road, and it's named so for a lamb that wandered off into this pitch-black cave and never returned home to its mother. The skeletal remains of the lamb are still there in the cave, which is just a little bit spooky.

I slipped and fell twice when I wasn't careful where I was walking. I really should be more careful about walking on ice!


At the end of the cave, we switched off all the headlamps to see how black it would be. Although completely pitch black, it was interesting that my eyes were still playing tricks on me - I almost thought I could see the edge of my sleeve, as if it were fluorescent. But still, the blackest black that it is possible to have - completely and utterly black. It could have been night or day and there would be no way of knowing.

David the storyteller told us about traditional Icelandic folk tales of elves and trolls living in these caves, and even sang us the Icelandic lullaby Sofðu unga ástin mín, which means Sleep my young love. It's very sweet, soothing, and a little bit haunting.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Nfmf7PtWiI

Because by now we had all become enchanted with caves, we also took a second route through a different, more challenging section of the cave. There was a fair bit of crawling through on all fours - real cave exploration as I like to call it!

It's hard to tell at first what the difference is between the different sections of the cave, but David explained the difference between places where gases in the molten lava spurted out to form lava hands, and places where lava cooled in layers that later fell to the ground. The more features were pointed out, the more I was able to start recognising different parts of the cave and how it was shaped by flowing red-hot lava.



We left the cave and went out again into the big wide world, but it took a long while for my eyes to readjust to daylight. Perhaps I'm better suited for darkness and the interior of caves after all.


CAVE.IS, www.cave.is
Snorkeling Silfra and Lava Caving
E-mail: dive@dive.is
Phone: +354 663 2858
Hólmaslóð 2, 101 Reykjavík, Iceland

Disclaimer: I was invited to review this tour by DIVE.IS in conjunction with CAVE.IS. All thoughts are my own and I received no compensation for this review. Some pictures used in this review were provided by CAVE.IS, who had no say in the likelihood of the lava tube collapsing.

Friday, April 19, 2013

Life update - Photo Friday: Going Purple


I'm really excited today, because I went purple! I've still got mermaid hair (trademark hair, thank you very much) just a different shade of mermaid. I stopped having my full-on turquoise because it's a colour that washes out really fast - I find that I have to redo my hair almost every month to keep it looking the same, and who's got time to do that anyway?

Besides, I'd been having turquoise for nigh on six months now and I decided it needed a change. So purple it was.


I used Directions Plum and Blue Lagoon/Turquoise on the ends, and I'm really really pleased with the way it turned out. The plum was nuts to use though - seriously, my entire bathroom has turned completely purple (sorry flatmates!!!) and although you think all hair dye should be the same, it's really not.

The purple went down a lot further than I expected it to, which left barely any space at all for my light turquoise ombre ends, but I guess that's just something that will have to be left to next time when my hair washes out enough for me to go over it again!

In the meantime, I leave you here with these zi lian (自恋 - Mandarin Chinese for vain) photos of me.


I'm in Morocco at the moment and showing my hair off!
Hello to a brand new shade of mermaid!

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

[SPONSORED POST] How to pack light for cruises


Editor’s note: This guest post was written by Catherine Lavinia for Thomas Cook cruises.

It can be challenging to prepare for a cruise, especially if it’s your first one and you’re unsure about what to take. If you’re flying from a port abroad and the cruise is less than 7 days, you may not want to pay for hold luggage if you can fit it all into your carry-on.

If the airline you travel with were to lose your luggage in transit, your entire trip could be ruined. travelling on cruises is less straightforward than a beach holiday, because unlike a regular vacation where luggage can catch up with you easily your days at sea make luggage retrieval difficult.

When heading off on week-long cruises such as those offered by the Thomson Celebration and Thomas Cook cruises, it’s no wonder then that many people opt to just take a carry-on bag. Knowing how to pack properly and maximise your space can be very helpful!

The key is to pack lightly. Avoid cramming in items of clothing that you probably won’t need (such as 7 pairs of shoes, ‘just in case!’). Be aware of the dimensions and weight you’re allowed, and keep an eye on the liquid limitations so that you know that whatever you pack will be allowed onto the plane.

Many airlines offer a 10kg limit nowadays which, if a little savvy, is plenty. Use a bag that is within maximum measurements, but only just.

Rather than packing seven different day outfits and similar amounts of evening outfits, compromise! Many cruises don’t require a formal dress code anymore so don’t worry about suits and evening dresses. Instead, pack multi-purpose items that can be mixed and matched. Pack a pashmina rather than heavy cardigans to keep the chill off your shoulders when required. Accessories don’t take up much space, so make use of them to glam up your attire.

While for many people, this may seem like too much hassle and they’d prefer to pay for the hold luggage, for others, it can be a handy, budget-breaking alternative that offers ultimate peace of mind.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Hiking glaciers in Sólheimajökull, Iceland



On an afternoon on the second day of my Icelandic road trip, I went hiking on Sólheimajökull, which is a glacier tongue of Mýrdalsjökull, Iceland's fourth-largest glacier. I'd seen pictures of people hiking up all sorts of cool places (cool? Get it? Ha ha) and I'd always wanted to be one of those people wearing really awesome-looking gear.

But first, in order to go hiking I had to get there. Getting to Sólheimajökull was a challenge in itself, though - we missed the turn-off the Ring Road more than once, and when we finally made it in the right direction the roads were awful! Completely unpaved gravel road - hearing gravel clatter and hit the metal underneath the car was almost frightening.

With that sort of road, no wonder all the vehicles look like this.

Iceland - where even the buses have monster wheels.
We did make it to the carpark and the foot of Sólheimajökull, though, and just in time for the hiking too it seemed - the guide was handing out gear just as we pulled in!

I was fitted for crampons (my guide had to rummage in the other basket for the kid-sized ones, ha ha!), handed my own ice-axe, and given a pair of waterproof pants to pull over my jeans (it was ice, after all). Just having these made me feel more professional already - like a real hiker.

Since I was going up on ice, I also made sure to dress really well with scarves, thick gloves and warm socks. After all, ice was going to be cold, wasn't it?

My pair of crampons.
Crampons are these spikes that attach to the bottom of a regular shoe and make walking on ice really easy, digging into the ice instead of you slipping around everywhere. Walking around in them on the ground was strange for a little bit, but once we got to the ice they were absolutely perfect - just like walking on regular ground, except on ice.



The ice was as blue as water, not the regular white stuff you usually see, and that surprised me. I thought if anything that the ice would be like compressed snow, but really it was more like an giant iceberg. From the bottom, Sólheimajökull seems unimpressive - although beautifully carved and sculpted, the dust

Once we started hiking, it became painfully clear to me just how out-of-shape I was - while everyone in the group was happily climbing uphill, I had to be conscious of taking really deep breaths and I could hear my heart beating in my ears. Clearly, living in a flat full of girls constantly feeding me slutty brownies and cheesecake wasn't doing me that much good!

After what seemed like a forever of effort and endless white, we finally made it to the plateau and I could stop and catch my breath. And you know what? The view is always better from the top.

Sólheimajökull and the hills behind it.
Although the glacier looks still and unchanging, it's actually more like a frozen river - it's ice, but it moves and flows the way that water does. Wind, heat and shade all combine to form a maze of shaped ice and valley. In summer when the temperatures rise, the glacier is less stable and more prone to collapse than it is in the winter cold, although the glacier is still there all year round.

I never knew that glaciology was an entire subject area, but then I realised that of course it must be - what else are scientists doing down in Antartica?

It was clear that he was passionate about and fascinated by glaciers. "Every day up here is different," he said. "The ice is always changing."

I was briefly reminded of the song Around The Riverbend from Pocahontas.


Almost like a North Pole expedition team!
It was fascinating to be up on the glacier looking at the thousand different shades of snow and ice and how they were all sculpted by the forces of nature. I don't think it really hit me that I was standing on ice until I saw some of the ice melting and forming small streams, carving out even more of the ice along its way!

About halfway through, I started to feel really warm because of the sun beating down on us. It didn't make any sense to me, since we were literally standing on ice - but I started to regret bringing those extra scarves and gloves. There wasn't even any wind either, which I had learned by now was very unusual for Iceland, although I was appreciating not having to battle against wind!

On the way down, we stopped to take a look down a cave that had formed in the ice.



Called glacier caves, these are formed by meltwater running through and under the glacier. From above, they don't look like much - it's when you go inside, being careful not to step in the meltwater on the ground, that it looks truly spectacular.




The blue from the inside of the cave was surreal - the most vibrant, vivid ice-blue. The sides of the cave, too - grooves and ledges of all sorts carved by meltwater. As if a testament to nature being ever-changing, glacier caves are only temporary and ones like these would collapse once temperatures rose in summer.




As we finally headed back down from the glacier, we happened to chance upon this group of people having a go at ice-climbing. I felt kinda bad for the guy climbing - I bet he must've been really stressed with so many people watching him climb! Ha ha!




On the way down, our guide started telling us about how the nearby volcano Katla, Iceland's most active and destructive volcano, was due to erupt soon and how there had been up to 300 minor earthquakes a day in the area, signs of imminent eruption.

My inner adrenaline junkie started paying attention - how cool would it be if we had been hiking and Katla had gone off, melting all the ice and forcing us to run to run uphill to get away from searing hot molten lava? I secretly started hoping that Katla would blow her top while we were hiking. Of course, that might not have ended very well, but it would be the most awesome thing ever.

I made a mental note to head back to Iceland when the next volcano erupted.



After an admittedly exhausting time hiking the glacier, I was ready to head onward to the next destination. One thing did seem a little bit strange, though, as I checked the mirror in the car - could it possibly be that going up on the glacier had given me a tan?

Íslenskir Fjallaleiðsögumenn - Icelandic Mountain Guides
Sólheimajökull Exploration
Address: Stórhöfði 33, 110 Reykjavík
Email: info@mountainguides.is
Tel: +354 587 9999
Fax: +354 522 4971
Disclaimer: I was invited to review this tour by Icelandic Mountain Guides. All thoughts are my own and I received no compensation for this review. Icelandic Mountain Guides did not ask that I go tanning on the glacier.

Friday, April 12, 2013

Photo Friday: Road Trip Iceland, Golden Circle

Me, driving manual on the wrong side of the road.
“Half the fun of the travel is the aesthetic of lostness.” - Ray Bradbury

There is no doubt that the best way to see Iceland is in a car. Public transport in Iceland is limited, so to get around anywhere outside of the cities is a real challenge, and that makes driving the best way to see everything that Iceland has to offer.

Plus, who could possibly say no to a good road trip?

The only issue was that a car would cost me €33 a day, and for four days that would be a good €132 - not terribly expensive, but still steep for a solo traveller. So off to Couchsurfing it was to look for similarly crazy people who would be willing to come with me on the trip.

Amanda, Josh, Jonna and me.
It didn't take long for my Couchsurfing forum request to get a response. A couple of mails back and forth to synchronise things (read: making sure that we both understood we were equally crazy people) and the road trip was soon set up.

The first time I met these guys was at the car rental office, and the first couple of minutes while I was trying to get back in the habit of driving a manual car (on the wrong side of the road, no less) were pretty freaky. Apart from one day driving in Skye, the last time I'd been behind the wheel of a manual car was when I was taking driving lessons. Of course I didn't tell this to my passengers or we would all have been freaking out.

We grabbed a couple of maps from a tourist office and hit the road.



The Golden Circle is a connection of roads that begin with Ring Road 1 just outside of Reykjavík, running through Þingvellir National Park, Geysir and Gullfoss which are the three major attractions of the area just outside the capital city. It's an easy and unbelievably picturesque day trip.

The first stop in the Golden Circle was Þingvellir National Park, a UNESCO World Heritage Site for being the seat of the world's first ever parliament. Who would have thought that a country this far north and this isolated could also have created the world's first parliament in history?

I have to say that I was wondering why on earth people would travel this far out and away from the city just to hold parliament meetings.

Þingvellir is also pretty cool because it's here that the North American and European continental plates are rifting from each other at a rate of 1cm a year. Which means that just driving through the park, you're driving from one continental plate to the other!

The edge of the North American continental plate.
It's a pretty cool thing to be standing on the edge of a continental plate and be able to see it crumbling downwards. The rocks are massive, and apparently also make really good climbing material. Jonna and Josh couldn't stay away from monkeying about everywhere.


While Amanda sheepishly stands to one side.


Although it's a lot of fun climbing out and about and over all sorts of rocks and stones, it's probably a good idea also not to be losing your car keys in the process. And that brings me to this:

Check #1 on list of crazy Icelandic things NOT to do - don't lose your car keys in the middle of a national park.


The sense of panic that settled over us once it dawned on us that I had somehow managed to lose the goddamn car keys was not a pretty sight. We were crawling the sides of the road, looking into every ditch and basically panicking.

It took us a good whole hour of searching, giving up entirely, calling the car company and telling them that we'd managed to lose the keys - before Josh came running back up to tell us that he'd found them.

It wasn't much of a surprise then that Amanda became the designated Keeper of the Keys, since clearly I was too careless and clumsy for my own good.

I don't think I made a very good first impression on my new friends by losing the car keys in less than 5 hours.
Once we got back in the car, we took a few big breaths to calm ourselves down and proceeded on our way. I couldn't even begin to say how thankful I was that this bunch of perfect strangers I had just met were understanding enough to not be fuming mad with me!

Part 2 of the Golden Circle route takes you through the rest of Þingvellir on a scenic drive through the Natural Park, which in the late winter snow and sun looked too beautiful to be real.

Þingvellirvatn.
Driving through the park took us toward Geysir, which sounds an awful lot like - you guessed it - geyser. Geysers all over the world are named after this one here in Iceland! I'd never seen a real geyser before, so I was really excited, too.

As we approached the area, we started to smell the 'welcoming' scent of sulphur.

Steam rising from hot springs in the area surrounding Geysir.
Amanda and Jonna were trying to convince themselves that the smell of sulfur didn't bother them one bit.
We parked the car, and although it was a bright and sunny day, make no mistake - it was freezing. The thermometer in the car read -1 to 0 degrees celsius, so... Yeah, it was pretty cold.

We went into the Geysir souvenir shop nearby to warm up a little bit before heading back out into the open. I also snagged myself a pair of really nice Icelandic wool gloves that were pricey, but fantastic against the wind and cold! Score one for the inner shopaholic.

Although it was cold, it felt a lot warmer while we were standing in the geothermal area. I don't think we smelled very good, standing in the shadow of the steam of the sulphuric hot springs, but with the water at a constant temperature of 80-90 degrees the steam was warm and we were content to be standing there.



I was surprised to learn that Geysir wasn't actually the more popular of the geysers in the area, and this was because Geysir's eruptions are unpredictable. Strokkur, on the other hand, is another geyser not 30 metres away from Geysir, and that erupted fairly frequently - every 6 to 7 minutes.

So I stood among the rest of the curious tourist crowd, waiting for Strokkur to go off. And waiting. And waiting. And then the water burst out from the ground, and we got a shock and nearly fell backwards because we were not expecting that at all.

It was a pretty funny sight, the four of us bent over laughing because we were too shocked by the suddenness of the erupting geyser to even do anything!

Standing in the suphur-smelling steam.
I became determined to capture my perfect geyser shot.

Photographing geysers aren't the easiest thing. Their timing is predictable, but not quite enough - you can tell roughly when they're going to go off, but not so accurately that you have enough time to work with settings on your camera, focus and capture the shot.

It took me a pretty long time - I missed something like three or four eruptions because I wasn't prepared, and then muttering to myself and slightly frustrated, I looked through the viewfinder for something like 2 minutes just waiting for the geyser to go off. Thankfully it finally paid off, and I was pleased.

Strokkur at full height. Success!
Strokkur at standby.
Our next stop was Gullfoss, but before that we pulled over at the side of a road to check out this completely random and unexpected sight. My dear fellow travel junkies, I present a car in the middle of a river. What?!

We were trying to be sneaky about taking photos because the family was still in the car.
Okay fine it's a 4WD, but... It's still a car in the middle of the river. Only in Iceland, folks.

When we finally got to Gullfoss, the wind was insane. Insane. Like, we had to hold the car door open or the wind would shut it in our faces insane. There was another souvenir shop at Gullfoss - another chance to warm up a little before stepping out into the cold - and then we drove down a short road to see this.

Gullfoss, partially frozen in late winter.
It's a pity that photographs only capture one moment in time, because standing there in the freezing cold next to this roaring monstrosity of a waterfall filled me with awe. The wind was roaring, little bits of ice were pelleting into our faces and even icing up the lens of the cameras, and the sound of the waterfall and wind in our ears was mesmerising.

The photograph doesn't really show it, but Gullfoss is massive. Huge, like it fills up your entire field of sight and wraps you in the white rapids of the waterfall.


I call this pose the "hold on to your hats."
Posing for photographs!
After about 20 minutes looking out at the waterfall I'd had enough - the ice mist was still pelleting my face, and it hurt, and I was cold. I retreated with Amanda back into the relative safety of the car while Jonna and Joshua decided to kick it up a notch and climb past the safety rope onto the iced-up sides of Gullfoss.

Jonna, about as precariously close as close gets.
It was nearly dusk before we decided to leave the Golden Circle and head further east to explore more of Iceland, every moment only getting better. That night, we saw the Northern Lights and I think this crazy first day out in the Icelandic wild was what really sealed the friendship between the four of us.

Just as long as you don't lose your car keys along the way.

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