Day 6: Water! Lava! Water! Genetics!

We’ve been staying at an isolated house boarded by farmland (horse farms, it seems. Icelandic horses are slightly smaller with long manes). I have to say, reading In Cold Blood at night in rural Iceland has been a bad decision (flat farmlands, no close neighbors, a family alone . . .).

I can’t get over how isolated Icelanders are

Today we drove down toward Vík, stopping at sights along the way. Much of the land is sheep and dairy farms. We see four cars this morning, far more than anywhere else outside of Reykjavik. You have to keep an eye out for places to eat on trips out here, as you can’t even count on a coming across a gas station.

A collection of waterfalls you could walk behind:

 

Skogarfoss:

Nice above the falls views, if you trek up a pretty tedious staircase. The ubiquitous sheep were chilling up top.

Eyjafjallajökull

Eyjafjallajökull, the volcano that erupted in 2010, halting plane flights:

It was right there!! Lava! Smoke! Explosion!

Look, look, I'm not lying to you! 

(Now I feel lame for photographing a photo)

Also, I guess I should show up in my own blog?

Not my worst awkward attempt at the myspace photo.

A man in Hafnarfjordur told us ash-dust from this volcano still blows over, and periodically he’ll have to clean it off his car.

Reynisdrangur

Iceland has a melancholy note that comes out most on its beaches. Gray sea beats against a black-pebble beach. Rain swept in unforgiving winds. A tall cave made of splintered rocks and geometric columns. Our first sight of Iceland’s national bird: puffin skeleton alone on the sands, head intact. (I'd show you depressing photos, but my camera keeps getting murdered by the rain).

Dyrhólaey

Cliffs above a crashing ocean. Lava rock has formed an arc. Wave hitting it spit towers of spray. The wind is brutal, throwing bullets of rain. This week’s Reykjavik Grapevine says pro-whaling Icelanders argue simply that life is hard in the North. Soft city-dwellers shouldn’t tell them how to survive.

Genetics

The Grapevine also reports that deCODE has found 2,400 women with a high likelihood of developing breast cancer. They want to alert the women so they can use the info in making health decisions, but public health authorities have argued that this would violate privacy concerns. Personally, I think either tell each person, privately, or ask them if they want to opt out of knowing what their breast cancer risk is.