This year’s fifth trip

To my big surprise I manage to push in another trip this year. Apparently it’s true what I say; there is always time for another trip!

A couple with whom I did the EC trek with sent out a message saying that they were going on a trek in September, asking if anyone wanted to join. After a bit of thinking and coordinating with work – while a fourth member of the EBC trek also signed up – I ended up buying this year’s fifth vacation. Oh dear.

7^th of September

Coming home from Turkey Wednesday the 4^th I will be leaving again the 7^th in the early morning flying to Romania. After taking a couple of trains I will end up at my goal, Brasov, north of the capital, near the centre of the country.

8^th of September

We will spend the first day trekking the Piatra Craiului Mountain which has some of the country’s richest pastoral areas. The walk will bring us to Seven Stairs Canyon and in the end ascending us almost 1000m. Returning to Brasov at the end of the day.

9^th of September

After moving to Bran we will trek the Bucegi Mountains which are considered a spiritual place. The area has quite a few rock formations which we will be able to see from the higher elevations we will reach after a difficult climb. Return to Bran in the evening.

10^th of September

The day will be spend trekking some of the most beautiful mountains in the country, the Piatra Craiului (The King’s Rock) National Park. It seems to be a quite interesting area with wildlife; despite the mountainous area only covering 1,5% of the European surface west of Russia, it has almost a third of Europe’s large carnivores. Estimated there are app. 6000 bears, 3000 wolves and 2000 lynx. Interesting!

11^th of September

We will be leaving Bran this morning for the last time to visit Bran Castle, also known as Dracula’s Castle. This will be followed by a transfer to first Sambetei Monastery, and from there we will walk into the Fagaras Mountains to the Valea Sambetei chalet where we will spend the night.

12^th of September

Today we will trek to the summit of the tallest mountain in Romania, Moldoveanu Peak (2544m). The climb to this point will take up most of the day, so I am expecting it to be a challenge compared to the previous days. Having returned home from Turkey and climbing Mt. Ararat (5165m) I suspect I might have an advantage in being acclimatized.

13^th of September

From the chalet we will spend a couple of hours descending to Sambata Monastery and from there transfer to Viscri village where we will spend the night.

14^th of September

A small tour around the village is followed by a drive back to brasov, ending the trip. We will continue with train to Bucharest where will we like will go our separate ways. I will be finding a hotel, hopefully close to the centre of the city so I can have a little sightseeing in the morning before leaving.

15^th of September

Return to Copenhagen in the afternoon.

Small correction to the trip to Turkey

Due to a lack of people signing up for the departure the 4th of September they had to cancel it. Instead, I was moved to the departure the 28th of August instead, coming back the 4th of September. The only difference is that I will be departing in the morning instead of the night which means that we will have half a day in Instanbul before continuing on to Van.

31st - Iceland, final thoughts

It was nice to be able to travel away like this if just for a few days. What one needs to prepare for, though, is that you end up having to drive a lot. There is plenty to see but it’s all spread out. And I think I wasn’t quite mentally prepared to be sitting in a car more than half the time we were on tours but there you go. And without the long drives I wouldn’t have seen what I did, so I guess it’s fine. Just keep it in mind if you choose to go to Iceland yourself. And gave plenty of time for the occasional nap, needed after only 6-hour sleeps for several nights in a row. :)

Also, the weather wasn’t really impressive when I was there. A cloud coverage of 60-85% with high winds. Only a slight drizzle now and then, so we stayed dry. But I would have preferred that there had been less clouds, even if the temps of 5-8 degrees meant it was warmer than at home.

Anyway; a quick thanks to my guides on the tours – Simmi, Björg and Mike. Cool guys, you were a big part of making the trip memorable!

Anyways, enough of this. Better start mentally preparing for the next trip. 3,5 months, sigh.

31st - Geothermals and cold

Last day in Iceland I took a trip by The Blue Lagoon on the way to the airport. The geothermal spa offers the same options as a normal spa, the main difference is the large pool which is heated by geothermal heat which has been through the geothermal power plant next door. The water is on average 37-40 degrees, pleasantly warm. It was very windy on the day so while the head was above water, slightly cold, the rest of the body was heated by the waters. Only problem was the gusts of cold winds now and then that managed cool down the upper 5-10 cm of water, suddenly sending a chill through your shoulders.

Talking about getting a chill – walking from the building to the water was something I didn’t think of first, but going through the door to the outside it was something I was reminded of very fast. If you thought it was cold when arriving, think about how it feels when only wearing swimming pants.

After this it was a short drive back to the airport and a pleasant flight home to Copenhagen. Got better by the fact that the airline handed out free chocolate eggs due to Easter.

30th - Walking and climbing

This Saturday was also an early departure, this time we were looking towards a 2½ hours’ drive to reach the Sólheimjökull glacier where we were to do some hiking on. Arriving at the site it was hard not to notice that it is a very popular spot for tourists to go, hiking on the glacier or not.

We got equipped and started the trip up the glacier. We got a few talks on how much it has been receding the last few years (since 2000 it has receded almost 100 meters) and the problems people in the surrounding lowlands encounter when the volcanos erupts and melts a lot of the snow and ice on the nearby glaciers.

We finished off by trying to do some ice wall climbing – it was fun, but requires much more technique than I had time to acquire on the 8-ish meter wall we had to our disposal.

Driving back we passed by the Skógafoss waterfall, one of the biggest in the country.

Coming back to the hotel I decided to sign up for another trip out to see northern lights. It was with another tour company than last night and it wasn’t until I had gotten the ticket I realized that the meeting time was 1930. Less than an hour to find a place to have dinner, so any fancy restaurant visits had to be postponed to some other time.

The drive out was good and standing outside for almost 4 hours we did see some activity, none of it as impressive as the previous night. Due to the low activity the ticket could be used as a rain check within the next 2 years for a similar tour. That’s pretty good service! Back at the hotel at 0200-ish I realized that this would not be a vacation where I got a lot of sleep.

With light pollution from Reykjavik

29th - The Golden Circle

Today the Golden Circle was on the itinerary. The Golden Circle is a round trip that brings you into central Iceland and looping back to Reykjavik. The trip passes by the Þingvellir National Park, Gullfoss waterfall and Haukadalur, a geothermally active valley know for it many geysers, Geysir and Strokkur as probably the two best known.

An hour’s drive from Reykjavik we reached Þingvellir NP, where the North American and Euroasian tectonic plates meet. These are very obvious as the ground is littered with large fissures and cracks, clearly indicating where the plates are. These often cause quite large earthquakes in the area even though we didn’t experience any while we were there. Also, our guide informed us that due to these plates and the fact that Iceland is basically located in the middle of such geological activity, the country increases on a yearly basis with 2 cm.

The wall you can see is the North American plate.

After another hour’s drive we reached Gullfoss, a waterfall of a total height of 36m. A popular tourist attraction, it is a very nice area in which it is located, but it is just… a waterfall with a bit of history attached. The water flows down into a crevice, so looking at it from the right (wrong?) angle it looks as if the water is just vanishing into the ground.

Having had lunch short drive took us to Haukadalurso we got to see some of the many legendary geysers of Iceland. They are all named after Geysir, the largest, but it is only rarely active. Strokkur, on the other hand, erupts approximately every 5 minutes, reaching a height up to almost 35 meters. The pools in the area are filled with boiling hot water (literally) which is heated by the subterranean deposits of magma. While there were quite a few pools around in the area, only Strokkur is regularly active.

Strokkur erupting.

The tour company added a small event to the classical Golden Circle trip; in the end we passed by Leiðarendi lava cave. This time I left my camera in my car – I had already gotten the shots I wanted and I would therefore not need to have to drag my bag after me in the tight places because there wasn’t room for me to have it on my back.

We arrived back at the hotel at around 1800-ish, 9 hours after departure. I decided to go for a quick dinner somewhere so that I could then have time while it was still light to find a place where I could have the city’s lights in my back, hoping to see some northern lights after the unsatisfactory night last night. Finding what I thought would be a good location I went back to the hotel to get my equipment. I arrived at around 2045 and realized that a tour was leaving in 45 minutes to go on a hunt for the lights, which convinced me to go with them instead. Off we were, and half an hour outside of Reykjavik we stopped and looked up. We got a flare now and then and not much more, but suddenly the sky almost exploded and the lights were everywhere. An absolutely stunning view. Coming back to the hotel at 0130 I felt much happier than before.

28th - Arrival in Iceland

Early departure from Copenhagen Thursday morning resulted in not much sleep, but one is willing to sacrifice much for vacation. At least the flight was on time (they all were) so there were no problems involved there. One of the first things the captain said was “Good morning this is your captain speaking. Welcome to SAS flight to Oslo, the airline with some of the world’s best stewardesses. Unfortunately we don’t have any of those with us today; instead we have some good looking ones with us.”

Changing flights in Oslo was without problems except for they wanted all through a security check with only two lane open. It took a while, but there were people in line who were getting quite stressed.

Arriving in Reykjavik I got my pickup to the hotel and spent the following hours walking the streets and relaxing in the hotel room for the coming night.

At 1800 I was picked up for the first activity of the trip. We exited the city and started off by driving by a place where they had fish hanging to dry. Following that we drove for another half an hour before we stopped in the middle of nowhere. A short walk from the road there was a big hole in the ground which was the opening to a lava tunnel and cave (Leiðarendi lava cave) which we walked and crawled through. It was interesting to see such tunnels but there wasn’t much room to move around in. If you are claustrophobic this was NOT the place for you.

Something smells fishy...

Crawling our way through the tunnels.

Reaching the exit, the red is from iron.

Driving an hour after this we ended up in a village called Eyrarbakki with the restaurant Rauda Husid (“Red House”) where we had a lobster dinner with desert. I was obviously a restaurant you would never find if you didn’t know of it.

After the dinner we began driving around, trying to find a place without too many clouds which was easier said than done as the clouds had been gathering throughout the night. Also the northern light activity didn’t seem very impressive so the only few sightings that we had were mostly fuzzy due to the cloud coverage.

After this not so successful result we drove all the way back to Reykjavik, arriving at the hotel at around 0200.