Descriptive Essay - About Iceland

"An Anecdote of the Land of Ice"

My friend Josh and I didn’t say much as we loaded our luggage into the rental car at Keflavik Airport. We’d just landed in Iceland, and already we were silenced by the landscape. “It looks even more amazing in person!,” Josh said as we took it all in.

Since we met during at a gathering at an old friends' house, Josh and I had dreamed to traveled extensively through the world together, from the canals of Venice and Amsterdam to the mountains of Austria and Italy, but Iceland was our main place of excitement to visit.

The surrounding lava field resembled something you would only see you in your wildest dreams, with huge moss-covered rocks haphazardly compiled on the ground, and funnels of steam rising to meet low-lying gray clouds in the distance. It was a formidable and alien landscape with no trees, no grass and no shrubs. We’d heard that Iceland was nothing like the other landscapes God has provided for us, and now we could see why.

With the suspiciously simple verbal directions given by the rental car clerk, “Just follow the road to Reykjavik." The clerk wasn’t kidding, there was literally one road out of the parking lot with a sign pointing to Reykjavik. Despite the barren landscape of volcanic rock that welcomed us, we were already warming to Iceland.

Iceland has the reputation of being a remote country, but it’s actually North America’s closest European neighbor, located relatively halfway between the U.K. and the U.S. There are many misconceptions about Iceland, and surely the name of the country doesn’t help any. Far from freezing or being covered in ice, Iceland has a relatively medium climate, averaging 60 degrees in the summer and 32 in the winter. We were visiting in April, and the temperature during our stay was around 40 degrees, requiring a winter wear, but far from scarf and gloves-weather.

Jumping on the tourist bandwagon, our first trip was to Iceland’s largest tourist attraction, the Blue Lagoon. The directions we received from our hotel’s keeper sounded vaguely familiar, “Follow signs for ‘The Blue Lagoon.'” We drove through grisly lava fields but were getting closer to the wisps of rising steam we had seen from the airport. Suddenly the Blue Lagoon appeared, providing a visual thrill of electric sky-blue water in dramatic contrast with the surrounding black craggy lava hills. If the moon had lakes, I imagine they would look like the Blue Lagoon.

Soaking and swimming in the lagoon for hours on end was an experience all its own. The air was a crisp 40 degrees, the water of the Blue Lagoon was 100 degrees. The steaming water was incredibly relaxing, and packed with mineral salts, silica and algae that are supposedly responsible for its famous healing powers. You won’t find any native Icelanders here, they prefer to hang out in Reykjavik’s seven other geothermal swimming pools.

Thoroughly relaxed and rested after the lagoon, Josh and I were ready to do some sightseeing. We opted to take a self-navigated Golden Circle tour, which showcases many of Iceland’s best known natural wonders in the southwest. The scenery changed dramatically as we drove along with the audio tour. The lava fields gave way to a landscape resembling only pure beauty, green and rolling glacial valleys.

In all my years of dreaming, I’ve never seen an environment as diverse as Iceland’s with such beautiful, sparse, welcoming, frightening, tame and wild which was all there on this tiny island.

Small cottages and farms were spread through out the vivid valley, and herds of little stumpy Viking horses would occasionally cross the street. We soon reached our first stop at Kerio, a volcano that imploded over 7,000 years ago, forming a crater that now has a lake in it. The water doesn’t drain, but instead changes in depth only from precipitation. The water was the color of a green-blue Crayola crayon, and the sloping side of the crater was like old maroon, dotted with dark green foliage. I never knew a crater could be so beautiful.

The next big stop of the Golden Circle tour was Geysir, the place where the word “geyser” originated. Every six to eight minutes, a geyser named Strokur erupts, spewing boiling water 20 meters into the calm air. That was an incredible experience as I’d never seen a geyser in action before. Josh had the pleasure to have visited Yellowstone National Park, and he felt that even though Old Faithful reaches higher, Strokur wasn't even able to be described in words.

I was surprised at first to see no guardrails anywhere, just small signs reminding visitors of the obvious need to stand back from the geysers. Iceland, especially the parts that aren’t frequented by tourists,