The Blue LagoonJet lag from flying from the east coast of the U.S. to Iceland ought to be terrible. The difference in time between Annapolis and Reykjavik was only four hours when I went. The flight is too short to sleep much even if you can sleep on planes so you have to begin your new day in Iceland just as your old one in the U.S. ends.
However, I didn't have any problem. The bright sun and bracing Icelandic wind (umbrellas are a clear sign of tourists as they are useless if it's raining) kept me wide awake despite the lack of sleep. Unlike I when I went to Madrid, I didn't make the mistake of trying to visit an art museum--the ultimate soporific--and just stuck with coffee and walking around.
Iceland has a population of around 300,000 and is the sort of place where everyone claims to know everyone else. Even if that is an exaggeration, there are usually only two or three degrees of separation instead of the six claimed for the rest of the world.
Still, it was a bit of a surprise when two people came up and said hello with a look of recognition on the streets of Reykjavik. It turned out it was two nice Americans from the Embassy who had seen a picture in advance of my visit. However, that never happened to me in any other country!
Despite the small population, I still managed to take a wrong turn. On Saturday, I took a tour of a lava tube. March isn't exactly high season in Iceland so the only two people on the tour were a Finnish woman and myself.
Tourists hoping to encounter Icelanders in the form of tour guides may end up disappointed. My tour guide was a Canadian expatriate. A Polish man was driving one of the other vans.
There are a lot of immigrants in Iceland--one of the locals working for the American Embassy is originally from Bosnia. (Side note: do you know many people who can speak Bosnian, English, and Icelandic?) Strong economic growth is drawing immigrants to Iceland and literally changing the face of this heretofore homogeneous island.
Historically, Iceland was so homogeneous that it was considered the ideal place for genetic research. deCode genetics has the genetic records of everyone in Iceland. Genetic analysis has already indicated the accuracy of the Icelandic sagas about the settlement of the island.
Today, about seven percent of Iceland's population are immigrants. When I visited Iceland around sixteen years ago, I can't recall seeing a single nonwhite face but seeing a black person on the streets of Reykjavik is not so rare anymore.
Much like Ireland but even more so, Icelanders are still getting used to the idea of immigration into their tight knit formerly-poor-but-now-rich island country. Incorporating newcomers is still a relatively new idea--as is hearing Icelandic in a foreign accent.
My genial Canadian tourguide took us inside a lava tube. Water seeping in through the entrance created amazing temporary stalactites (or is it stalagmites?) in the form of icicles dripping down from the ceiling and even connecting to the floor on occasion.
When the guide directed us to go on our own to the other exit, we figured it had to be tourist proof or he wouldn't let us go on our own. Wrong. Caves are confusing places and we somehow managed not to go the right way.
When one is lost in a cave, one's first thought is that this is not a good time to panic. The cave is small, the guide knows it well, and will come find us. (The second thought is that this is an excellent time to panic.)
Eventually, about 90 minutes after we entered the cave as it turned out, we ran into the guide hunting for us just as we finally figured out the route back to the entrance. "All's well that ends well" though we were both mighty glad to see the light coming from the entrance.
On the ride over, the guide told us how only one drunk tourist and one who spoke no English got lost and were quickly found among the hundreds he had taken through the lava tube. Well, he now has to double his count of lost tourists. (No pre-caving alcohol here and I speak good Englush.)
Needless to say, the Blue Lagoon, a wonderfully hot bathing mudhole made out of the runoff from a geothermal power plant, was extremely welcome relaxation at the end of the day. It has become one of Iceland's major tourist attractions since it is a lot of fun and located between Reykjavik and the airport.
