|
|
|
Blue Lagoon
Wednesday, May 1 2002 setting: east of downtown Reykjavik, IcelandToday was our last day in Iceland. After breakfast, Gretchen arranged for us to take a tour of the Blue Lagoon, since it was the only way to get there without a car. This was one of those typical tours where a tour guide at the front of the bus narrates as you're driven by various landmarks; the price for each of us was 4000 kronur ($40). I wasn't too enthusiastic at first, even though the tour had all the makings for becoming an episode of the Simpsons.
Shortly into the tour, it was clear that with a subject as interesting as Iceland, it was going to be pretty difficult to have an uninteresting tour. Somewhere south of Reykjavik we found ourselves completely surrounded by fresh-looking lava stretching off as far as the distant hills. But this lava was, it turned out, already a thousand years old. It was kind of depressing to see the slow pace of plant succession. The only thing growing on it was reindeer moss.
Shortly into the tour, it was clear that our experience had all the stereotypical attributes of a guided tour in a foreign land. First of all, nearly everyone in our small Flybus was American (those who weren't American were German). Then there was the older, over-friendly gentleman who kept shouting out vaguely cringe-inducing questions to be answered by our tour guide. And finally there was our guide herself, an older schoolteacherly woman whose weatherbeaten face made her look older than she probably was. She stuck closely to her time-tested script, which came liberally-sprinkled with not-especially-funny self-effacing asides. Her sense of humor was clearly targeted at white-bread-munching, Family Circus-appreciating American tourists and Gretchen and I kept rolling our eyes at each other with every unfunny zinger. But, we agreed later, our tour guide was sharp and knew plenty about the Reykjanes peninsula. Her love for and knowledge of the geologic processes at work here erupted through the thin crust of her American-pleasing goofiness like magma from a shield volcano.
On the way to the Blue Lagoon we passed a huge kilometer-long aluminum processing plant built along an artificial harbor. There isn't any minable aluminum in Iceland and the only reason the plant is here is because of Iceland's cheap and abundant geothermal and hydroelectric power. Bauxite ore is shipped to this plant from Australia, processed into aluminum, and then shipped to distribution points overseas and made into Cannondale bicycles, Pepsi cans, dog tags, garage siding, and the like. According to our tour guide, the plant is so big that workers get around inside on bicycles.
 The Blue Lagoon itself was smaller and more developed than I expected. On one end there was a large building with showers, storage lockers, a restaurant, and a gift shop. As we were going through the turnstile, Gretchen asked about towels and learned that we'd have to rent them for 150 kronur apiece. Did the nickel and diming of Iceland know no shame? Gretchen threw such a fit about the towel charge that the guy handing them out gave us a fifty percent discount.[REDACTED]
After going through the usual Icelandic pre-pool showering ritual, I met up with Gretchen in the heated indoor part of the Lagoon, and we waded out through a door into the cold, windy outdoors. The water, geothermally heated to body temperature, was only about four and a half feet deep and had a peculiar chalky blue color. This came from various dissolved minerals, suspended particulates of white clay, and perhaps reflected light from the arctic sky. The Blue Lagoon is an entirely manmade structure; everything except the lava and hot sea water have been trucked in from elsewhere. Unlike other geothermal installations (including some of the showers in Reykjavik), the Blue Lagoon didn't smell strongly of hydrogen sulfide.
The machinations bringing the hot saltwater to the surface and moderating its temperature must be a terribly noisy process, because the water of the Blue Lagoon was full of hissing noises. Interestingly, though, the noises weren't audible until I actually put my head in the water. As I'd gradually sink into the water, I'd begin hearing an electric hiss as the water lapped against the back of my neck. By the time I'd submerged my ears, the hiss had risen to a high-pitched roar.
We'd picked a good day to be there; only about 20 other people were in the Lagoon with us. Wandering around exploring for eddies of especially hot water or clouds of steam, we'd occasionally stumble into frightful hot pockets or unpleasantly cold spots. When we wearied of such temperature explorations, we gooped up our faces and hair with lava crumbs and clay and became the kind of mud people that white supremacists aren't referring to when they use the term. [REDACTED]
After an hour and a half, we showered and rejoined our tour group. When we got on the bus, Gretchen noticed that my left ear still contained a huge dollop of greyish lagoon clay.
Next stop was the geothermal power plant adjacent to the Lagoon. We thought we'd actually be touring the plant, but all we did was tour a kitschy self-guided exhibit in its basement. It explained plate tectonics, Icelandic volcanism, and earthquakes using movie clips and illuminated plastic panels. The earthquake demonstration featured a scale model of a suburban scene having a crack running down the middle. You'd push a button and the land on either side of the crack would move, accompanied by a deep roar on hidden oversized woofers. It was ridiculous. The plant reeked of hydrogen sulfide and by the time we left I had a full-on sulfur-induced headache.
Our tour continued south to the coastal fishing village of Grindavik, where we broke for lunch at a restaurant called Sjómannastofan Vör. They had a cafeteria-style arrangement featuring pan-fried haddock, pasta, little anonymous grandmother-style potatoes, and what might be a typical Icelandic salad: iceberg lettuce with a big spoonful of mayonnaise plopped in the middle. Before coming to Iceland, Gretchen had read somewhere about how much Icelanders love mayonnaise, yet this was to be our only experience of being assaulted with the stuff. Mayonnaise is something of a running joke between Gretchen and me; we use it as a quasi-metaphor for all that is non-Jewish in the world. It's not that Jewish dietary laws proscribe mayonnaise, it's just not something that a self-respecting Jew would eat. Being about as non-Jewish as any place on earth, then, it seemed natural for Iceland to fully embrace mayonnaise as a cornerstone of its national cuisine.
Since Gretchen doesn't eat fish, the Sjómannastofan Vör staff managed to scare up a vegetarian alternative, a sort of weird Icelandic vegetable patty that Gretchen was able to fashion into a reasonable sandwich.
Our tour continued out to the very end of the Reykjanes peninsula, stopping along the way so we could look at rifting, steaming mud pots, and reindeer moss. Since Gretchen was the only one on our tour bus carrying water, she got to do the honors when our tour guide wanted to demonstrate how reindeer moss changes from rough and grey to soft and green under the influence of water. This was a phenomenon I'd seen many times with the reindeer moss that grows on my parents' farm in Virginia.
After touring Iceland's westernmost tip, our tour ended at the Leifur Eiriksson International Air Terminal. The moment Gretchen and I entered the building, two security people grabbed us to perform a "random security inspection." But there was nothing random about it because until our Flybus had arrived, they'd been waiting around with nothing to do. Gretchen noticed that the lady security guard had a habit she'd observed in other middle-aged Icelandic women. She'd inhale sharply and audibly before saying certain phrases and sentences.
As our airplane climbed up above the North Atlantic, my sulfur-induced headache got so bad that I had Gretchen go fetch me some Tylenol. Later I tried to watch the in-flight movie, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone but it was so tiresome that I fell asleep with the headphones a'blaring. We passed over the Greenland icecap in the daylight and the French guy next to me pointed it out during a brief break in the heavy cloud cover. I was a little concerned about east coast weather when I could see snow in Canada extending as far south as the St. Lawrence River, but it was a very pleasant 68 degrees Fahrenheit when we touched down at JFK.
The moment we got home, we took Sally for a walk in the Vale of Cashmere, where we welcomed the flowers and lushness as never before. Someone had erected a Maypole at the entrance of the Vale, and gave Gretchen the opportunity to expound on her preference for the socialist meaning of May Day over the pansy-ass faux-pagan crap.
Happily, we were able to catch a rerun of the episode of Six Feet Under that we'd missed while in Iceland. View a gallery of pictures from this adventure.
For linking purposes this article's URL is:
http://asecular.com/blog.php?020501 feedback
previous | next |
