it is an experience that i will never forget. the effects of continuous sun. it is 11:30 pm and i’m sitting on the terrace of the hotel where the sun looks like it is,um, 7:00pm. essentially dusk. the sun won’t set. it will be dusk for a couple hours and then it will rise again. in fact, June 21st was the summer solstice. not that it mattered since the sun won’t set for another 3 weeks.

i woke up this morning to sunlight behind the shades and suddenly had anxiety of being late for the departure. not that we had a departure time but that we wanted to get an early start to the day. i jumped out of bed and checked my friends watch. 10:30am! oh shit. however, instead of waking chucky and diane, i got dressed to find a local time source to verify. i finally found one on the alarm system in the lobby. 4:30am was the local time. oh brother. 10:30am looks like 4am upside down. it was seriously daylight outside and i was completely out of it. as much as i wanted to stay up to work on the site, i couldn’t. instead, i recalculated the correct time and set the alarm on my iphone. i quickly fell asleep until the alarm went off around 8am (iceland time).

i was so exhausted yesterday that i barely wrote about the first day of iceland. a few highlights. as we were driving around reykavik, we saw the iceland deloitte office building. once again proving the vast extent of my new company. the lava flows were amazing but if you didn’t know you were on a lava flow, you would have never known. the big green mountain. the algae that grew in the geothermally heated water of the hot baths. more like luke warm. walking behind the waterfall was incredible, wet, but incredible. the landscapes of iceland are beautiful and dynamic as i mentioned before.

by the time we finally made it to our final destination, a restaurant only minutes from the hotel, my first beer never tasted so good. after the first beer, i had to slow down my consumption or risk face planting into my cheeseburger from exhaustion. on the way back, i tortured lydia, my Australian friend, by driving on the left hand side of the street while she tried to adapter herself driving on the right hand side of the street. i had forgotten i told i wouldn’t tease her after she bitingly told me that when we arrived at the hotel. what can i say, i am a goofball and when i am tired, short term memory is not available.

ok, today was filled with so much amazing nature that i had a hard time keeping up with my camera. we had the option of backtracking about an hour east to vik to see black rock beaches and a sea arch. however, and thankfully, diane, chucky and i declined the invitation of driving back through the previous terrain and headed for the national park of skaftafel.

on the way, we successfully located the seaside turf church mentioned in a Saga from the 1200s that only seats two people. the tiny town was called nupsstadir. the town was abandoned but the little houses and church were quaint. the tiny church had a turf roof with an organ and candles. i said successfully cause chris, the group leader, couldn’t find it.

the national park of skaftafel’s main attraction is the glacier. we trails around the mountain and far reaching places all had estimated times. we chose the short 1 hour trail that took us close to the glacier. as we approached the glacier, the temperature quickly dropped and the wind picked up. it was the strangest sensation. it radiated cold.

i desperately wanted to walk on the glacier but i couldn’t. we were super close but when i attempted to hike up a small black mountain to determine how to cross the moat that surrounded the glacier, it turned out to be a hill of ice covered in mud. as i tried to hike up the

mountain, the earth gave away to show the ice underneath. most of it was mud melting off the ice cube, and the situation became precarious. looking at the terrain we would have to cover to eventually reach the glacier, which consisted of more of the mud covered ice, we decided not to attempt to reach the glacier.

we hiked back to the tourist center, and after a quick lunch, diane and i left chucky with his book at the center and hiked up the mountain an amazing waterfall. in fact, several waterfalls, but the end of our hike was a waterfall with a beautiful display cliff made of huge hexagonal crystals that were once part of the center of a volcano. the minerals inside the dormant volcano had crystallized. the volcano had eroded revealing the crystals in the interior. the crystals weren’t shiny or crystal looking, but the structure reminded me of the sculpture in helsinki.

as we were hiking back down, the view was stunning with snow capped mountains and the glacier peeking out between the mountains. in front of the mountains, the land was flat as far as you could see, which reminded me of colorado.

ok, back in the car to the next stop. according to the guidebook, the part of the highway after skaftafell was created by a flash flood in the 1990’s when a volcano erupted suddenly underneath the glacier Vatnajokull, europe’s largest glacier. the terrain was a desolate seaside desert, which has also been seen in numerous hummer commercials.

the next stop was just incredible. we crossed the largest one lane bridge and to the left was a lagoon jam packed with hundreds of turquoise icebergs that had broken off of the vatnajokull glacier. the iceberg’s desire is to make it to the ocean, but the entrance is small. so the iceberg hangs out in the lagoon to sweat off the pounds (shrink) until it can make it through the small entrance.

in the distance was the enormous glacier and snow covered volcanos. take your breath away beautiful. to top it off, tiny seals were swimming in the lagoon. the water was 2 degrees celsius.

we met up with chris and his carload of misfits, and we decided to take the guided boat excursion through the lagoon to up close and personal with the icebergs. the boat was amphibious and had a small zodiac that made a path through the icebergs. the zodiac picked up a small piece of ice floating in the water and handed it to our guide. the guide explained that the ice was over 1000 years old and the ice melts 5 times slower than regular ice. the guide guaranteed it was the oldest thing we would ever eat as she handed out small pieces for us to sample. the ice tasted like cold freshwater. nothing really different except the experience of a small iceberg melting in your mouth.

as we were about to leave, john, jay, and the aussies show up. they had decided to backtrack to the black sand beaches, which they said were beautiful.

they were headed for the boat and we were headed to our final destination, the hotel in a town 2 hours away in Djupivogur. gotta love these names!

the drive was spectacular. it reminded me of driving along highway 1 in california with windy roads along with coast. we saw glaciers jutting out between the mountains, tiny farm villages, beautiful vistas, cliffs, fjords, a tunnel and the ocean.

we arrived at the sleepy fishing village of djupivogur around 8:30pm. it was so beautiful that i had the sudden urge to walk around before it was dark. the sudden urge quickly vanished when i realized the sun won’t be setting anytime soon. the hotel framtid faced the snow capped mountains across an beautiful fjord and a small harbor of fishing vessels.

after dinner i attempted to write but it was a challenge. our room was in another building up the hill, so i bought a beer and walked back to room. it was midnight and the sun was low on the horizon but it wasn’t dark. such an amazing day.