As I blog this I'm on the road to Iceland's highest summit, typing away on a blackberry. The scenery is impressive, volcanoes and glaciers. Vents everywhere spew out hot smoke and boiling water. People here take advantage of this and huge steel pipes bring the free hot water to the capital. It makes the showers stinky. The hot water was welcomed after a 4 day hike from landmanalaugar to thorsmork. (You can follow us at icelandtrip.wikispaces.com and click jp travelog, or check out more photos here)
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people visited the bayblab instead of doing their experiments
7 comments:
I don't believe it. Let's see some photos.
We made a small detour to the new volcanic island of westman to go hike on the volcano and go see the puffins. There was a big eruption here in the 70s and 30 million tons of lava enlarged the coast. The puffins were learning to fly, but they are hard to approach since people eat them here.
Hey I,m relaxing at Vatnajokull right now, the third largest glacier in the world after antartica and greenland. There was an eruption under the glacier in 96 which flooded the entire plain where my tent is standing. Weather permitting we'll climb the highest peak of iceland tomorow, although my companions are so sore by now that they walk like mr roboto. I also saw a cool bacterial colony on a thermal vent. There was a filament like white colony, maybe sulfur reducing, where it is warmest 80c and a thick green cyanobacterial colony under. About 1m large and 15cm thick. I wish I could bring back a sample. It's probably been growing there for a long time.
I want to knee Thor in the balls. We had to abandon our hopes to reach iceland's highest summit because of really bad weather conditions. We came back soaked and cold. Never got to use all the ice gear. So we decided to drive east to the fjords. Saw some icebergs on the way. It seems that glacier runnoffs must be really rich in nutrients as there was a flurry of activity where it met the sea. Thousands of petrels and some seals were busy eating what I speculate may be a crustacean in the frigid water. I havw never seen current this strong. It toppled and dragged huge icebergs as if they were toys. The black volcanic beach on the backdrop seemed endless.
We drove to the north, close to the artic circle. It was a a cold and desolate expanse of moon like fields. We got to a small town near a volcanic lake. The folks here have a festival in honor of an algea that is only found here and in one lake in japan. What's unusual about it is that it forms perfect spherical balls that rise to the surface during the day to photosynthesize and drop to the bottom at night. We hung out quite some time in a blue lagoon with water warmer than your bathtub. It was nice to swim around. Eerily nothing lives in there as the water is too rich in minerals and sulfur and too basic to support life. I made sure I took plenty of picture of the geothermal power plant to show you bayman.
Wow sounds awesome. Can't wait to see those pics. We can see who has the bigger icebergs when I get back with new Newfoundland photos.
We are now back to our starting point of Reyjavick. We just stopped at the worlds first hydrogen station. 350 bars at about 15 dollar per kilo. They have hydrogen buses here and they are preparing for a complete hydrogen conversion for 2050. Cool.
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