I love the blackness of the basalt sand. Above you can see a couple of basalt rock fingers/stacks in the distance, which are leftovers from a sea-battered cliffline that was once there.

The sea was rough and the waves were strong. We all stood watching it for a long time.. sort of absorbing its energy and marvelling its power. I imagined what it would be like swimming there. Or surfing there. I couldn’t decide what would kill me first – drowning or hypothermia.

^Here’s a video I took so you can get more of a feel!

The waves would bash the shore so hard that there would be such a huuuuge area of foam each time.

Sometimes, we would be so engrossed in our awe that we don’t realise the foam creeping up to TOUCH us. We’d suddenly realise and run away screaming.. it was so much FUN! It’s like playing catch with the sea. It’s a game I regularly enjoy at the beach, but I have to say, this one in Vík was my fastest and most exciting opponent yet.

DINNER AT HOTEL PUFFIN/HOTEL LUNDI

Following tips on TripAdvisor, we went to Hotel Puffin to eat. There wasn’t much choice in Vík really, especially since it was winter/off-peak season as well.

There are two main meats in Iceland – fish and lamb. By this time we were accustomed to most restaurant menus offering either one of these as a main. I think the menu is also more limited during winter season.

NOT that it bothered me – because Icelandic lamb is HEAVENLY. So soft, so tender, so juicy, so effing delicious!

^Dessert was apple crumble (pretty good). I also tried Lava Beer, a strong, pitch black beer with an alcohol content of over 9.4% (yesss). It had a rather chocolatey aroma. I liked it!

DAY 4 – DRIVING EAST

The next morning, we checked out of Volcano Hotel – which we LOVED – and started our journey to Jökulsárlón (the famous iceberg lagoon!) early. As we were passing Vík again, we stopped by to pick up supplies, like food… and an amazing wolf tail that I found at a souvenir shop, of course.

SOOOO this is what the place looks like in the daylight..

^This reminded me of Table Mountain in South Africa!

^Do you love the bits of ice on the ground? I did!

^Getting out photos.

The landscape was so vast and so empty. So strange and so overwhelming. So open and so exciting!

^Me with Zorro

^Iceland’s everchanging, ever-so-beautiful landscape.

^Jayna, the camera and photography enthusiast in our group.

She brought some fancy schmancy analog camera that opened up like a lunchbox. Or a jack-in-a-box. My eyes nearly popped out when she said it cost her £1000.

^Birds.. I thought this shot was rather National Georgraphic-esque? Don’t you think? Except that I took it with my iPhone and there probably needs to be more birds present..

^I LOVE THESE TWO PICS ABOVE

What kind of ALIEN landscape is that, right??  I was in a car on a road that was pretty much mine, staring at this STRANGE scene with the icy cold wind in my face. For a few short moments, I had left the planet and found another.

Laufskálavarða

One of Iceland’s oldest farms used to be here.. until it got disintegrated by the eruption of Katla (nearby volcano) in 894. That is, by the way, 1119 years ago..

*bimbo moment – sometimes I can’t quite grasp the fact that there were PEOPLE on this planet THAT long ago.. what more doing activities like FARMING. Didn’t they just live in caves and doodle on the walls?*

Laufskálavarða, the lava mound, was named after the farm. The tradition is that if you’re passing through for the first time, you add a stone to one of the bazillion stone cairns for good luck on your journey.

Honestly, they looked like piles of poo.

^I tried to ‘be one’ with Laufskálavarða.

^Erm..

^Here’s a video of us goofing around on an ice puddle 🙂

ICELANDIC HORSES

We passed by some of these curious horses loitering around the fence and stopped to say hello.

I patted a couple of them. But I don’t really understand Horse.. what more Icelandic Horse, so I wasn’t sure what they tried to say to me. We left them a bite of an apple. I’m not sure if they ate it in the end.

^Remnants/steel beams of a bridge that was DESTROYED by glacial floods caused by a volcanic eruption in 1996. Can you believe the bridge was demolished by a bunch of GIANT ICE BLOCKS?

Next up: Jökulsárlón Iceberg Lagoon.

Want more tips on how to make your trip to Iceland AWESOME? Check out TinyIceland! It’s one of my favourites.

The post Iceland Day 4 – Vík Black Sand Beach / Laufskálavarða / Driving East appeared first on SMALLCRAZY.

Tools I Used

I used two apps on my iPhone – Aurora Buddy and Aurora Forecast. I found the latter to be more useful – which explains why Aurora Buddy is now no longer existent.

Aurora Forecast is developed by TINAC and is available on both iOS and Android. It can be used for both northern and southern hemispheres and it’s great because it gives you hourly predictions of solar activity. This is part of what determines whether there are ‘lights’ in the sky or not. However, cloud cover is also an important element as obviously.. what’s the point of level 10 activity when it’s hidden away behind a thick blanket of crappy ol’ CLOUDS? This website by the Icelandic Met Office provides a good cloud cover forecast.

SADCars, our car rental company, also has a concise guide to hunting the Northern Lights in Iceland.

I don’t want to bore you with a bazillion photos, so here is a small selection of my favourites taken that night. All photos were taken using my old Olympus PEN or my friend’s Panasonic Lumix, not any fancy SLR camera.. hence why they might not look that awesome ;p

^Just at the entrance of the hotel.

I was lying on the cold hard ground whilst taking this photo. I remember staring up into the sky, camera tucked away, just enjoying the moment and thinking what a beautiful wonderful world it was (it IS).  And how fortunate I was to be there. Fortunate for the luxury of sight and happy to be alive.

It was all around us.. up above the hotel building, down towards the sea, and back beyond the mountains.

Sometimes they would disappear for a while, and then reappear when you least expect it. Almost like a tease!

We watched the lights dance – yes they really constantly move and change shapes.. like.. magic. There’s no better word, sorry 🙂

^Stars.

I couldn’t believe how incredibly lucky we were.. we stood in the freezing cold watching this magic for HOURS (about 3-4 hours I think), in the company of our fellow hotel guests. We were all mostly silent throughout, as if out of respect for the greatness that was happening in the sky.

Some people indulged themselves with large tripods and giant cameras planted firmly on the ground, creating videos using time-lapse photography (as each frame needs to have a long exposure).

The Camera vs. Your Eyes

It’s important to note that what you see with the naked eye is NOT like what you see in photographs of the aurora. The colours are much more vivid in a photo due to the long exposure and so they appear greener than they really are. What I witnessed that night was mostly a milder, more washed-out shade of green. Sometimes, the camera can even pick up bits of the rarer red or purple colours when actually you couldn’t see them in real life.

But the beauty of what you see with your own eyes is that you can experience the lights while they are ALIVE. Alive as they move, breathe, and dance for you!

I made sure not to spend too much time behind the camera. I wanted to watch, smell, feel, and listen with the best tools I had – my own mind and body.

Note from TinyIceland: When the forecast looks good like above 4-5 then you will see the green colors bright+other colors if lucky with the naked eye:)

[On the night these pics were taken, the forecast was about 3-4]

^Here is the one crappy pic that we managed to get with me in it.. haha

Final Tip

I want to stress that when I planned this trip, I constantly reminded my friends that seeing the northern lights was NOT the purpose of visiting Iceland. I wanted it to simply be a BONUS if we did see it, and if we didn’t, it would be completely fine because we would’ve made the best and most of our time there.

I made sure our itinerary was full of activities that did not include chasing down these lights. However, since we were driving the whole Ring Road, most nights were spent in ‘middle-of-nowhere’ locations where there were almost no light pollution (you need the sky to be as dark as possible, to increase the visibility of any solar activity). I also timed the trip to happen during the new moon (i.e. no moon), so as to at least give ourselves the best chance possible!

Have you seen the Northern Lights before? Tell me where and how much you LOVED it!

*For the rest of my Iceland posts, please see my Travel Log.

The post Iceland – Seeing The Northern Lights! appeared first on SMALLCRAZY.

Under the costume, I wore two layers of UNIQLO HeatTech (top and bottom), and a fleece pullover.

It was still cold.

Looking rather.. CONSTIPATED here.. but actually I think I was just dying in the cold/trying to warm up my hands.

There was so much dry grass/hay around that I simply had to try lying on it.. and yes! It was quite soft! It could easily be a bed. For a frozen corpse anyway, in that location.

You can get your very own animal kigu from www.kigu.co.uk or www.animalcostumesshop.co.uk 🙂

The post Being a Fox in Iceland appeared first on SMALLCRAZY.