Category Nature
Sea ice!
Not far from the base camp we used for getting to the ice cave was a glacial lagoon. The glacier extended down to the water’s edge, occasionally sending off large chunks of ice on journeys to the sea. Some of these became lodged in the narrow mouth of the lagoon until they melted enough to […]
Ice caves!
When we booked this trip the offer of visiting an “ice cave” stood out as unusual among the tours we were considering. we didn’t know if it would be all that cool but decided to give it a try. So glad we did! It turns out to be one of the cooler things we saw. […]
Black sand beaches!
At long last! The wind died down just enough for us to scrape our way along the southern coast to Vik, a tiny town on a stretch of black sand beach. If you do a web search for pictures of Vik, you’ll see serenely pastoral views of a picturesque village nestled among green fields beside […]
Waterfalls!
Iceland is a land of wind and volcanoes and glaciers—and also waterfalls! They pour over the volcanic cliffs onto the flat coastland below. Highly dramatic and incredibly photogenic, they are sure crowd pleasers. The first one we visited was Seljalandsfoss, which was also the largest and busiest. Next, just a few hundred yards up the […]
Lava!
Getting rescued with a new (and functional!) van did not solve our problems. Cyclone Dennis was still pummelling us with 100+ mph winds, topping 150mph in the passes—which meant it wasn’t safe for us to continue our journey. So our guide announced an impromptu visit to the Lava Centre, which offered a small and highly […]
Stranded!
We left before dawn (aka a little after 9am) on a two-day adventure tour to the southern coast of Iceland. In no time at all we were traversing frozen lava fields and climbing our way over the Blue Mountains. About an hour outside of Reykjavík, just as we were passing through a town named after […]
Exploring Reykjavík
Oh man, what a day. We criss-crossed this charming town no fewer than five times from end to end under the biting winds of a north-Atlantic cyclone. The meals were delicious, the architecture fantastic, and those shapes, colours, and textures of the houses? I’m obsessed. Off to bed now—photos in order, without explanation; out into […]
Kiwis and geysers
My last day in New Zealand dawned and I still had not seen a single living kiwi bird. Stuffed dead ones? Yes, in the museum in Auckland. Living ones? Not a one. Apparently they are “elusive” and “on the verge of extinction”. But so help me, I was not about to get on a plane […]
Redwoods treewalk
Too late in process of deforesting their island for timber and agriculture, the New Zealanders discovered that their native trees took much longer to regrow than the trees they were used to in Europe and the Americas. They needed to figure out a way to replenish their forests and timberlands without having to wait hundreds […]
Rotorua canopy tour
New Zealand is a land of nature adventures — we had already glimpsed this during our hike to the waterfall, and Karl’s and my trek through the volcanoes, and on Friday we continued with a ziplining tour of one of the regions virgin forests. Because the little kids were too small for the harnesses, we […]
A More Gentlemanlike Manner 