From Heimaey, Iceland

So... Iceland! It´s rainy. And cold. But it seems to be a really beautiful country when the sun comes out. Right now we are at the internet because there is nothing else to do. We are on the tiny island of Heimaey in the Vestmannajaer island chain (the Westman Islands) hoping to see puffins. yesterday we climbed out onto some cliffs and did see puffins flying around, and I have to say - they are exceedingly cute. But with the rain it´s a bit dangerous to be running around on the cliffs, and the puffins aren´t too active anyway.

My first day in Reykjavik was gorgeous. I walked all around the coast and sat in a hot tub for a while, and then D. got here in the evening. The airline lost his luggage with all his camping stuff in it, so that limited our possibilities a little. The next day we drove up to the Snaefellsness peninsula, which is full of weird volcanic lava formations. We had sun about half the time, and we saw a lot of cool scenery. There were some really great waterfalls, tons of different seabirds and we even saw an arctic fox. I think the birds are the coolest thing about the island so far. Other than that, everything is still sort of recovering from the winter. Then we came back and took the ferry down to the island we´re on now.

There´s not too much to say about everything so far. Iceland seems to be a weird country. We are definitely before the season, so there is nobody here and it´s cold. The people aren´t particularly friendly, the names are long and hard to say, and we have a tendency to get lost everywhere. So far we haven´t taken one 'trail´that has actually been marked from beginning to end. Fortunately we are doing a lot of laughing about it, especially the long Icelandic names. The food is not particularly good, but it is ridiculously expensive. Turns out sandwiches from gas stations are the best bet, and we are at least amused by the strange things on offer there.

Probably tomorow we will head along the southern coast over to the big glacier there. We heard it´s supposed to rain the rest of the time, so we´re going to try to see what we can. If not, we heard there are some nice geothermal hot springs outside of Reykjavik, and maybe we´ll just spend the rest of the time there.

Well, my time is up... till next time.

-Kim