Bláa lónið-Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon- This is a particularly famous spot in Iceland, due to the fact that it is totally frickin awesome.

I must note, I didn’t think much of the fact that I was taking all of my pictures in black and white until I was about to leave. I realized how dumb it was because, of course, one of the greatest features of the lagoon is the intense, light blue color of the water, and it is a one-click process to change color photos into black and white using my computer. This generally won’t affect the photo quality either, so now I have taken more in color. I personally just like the black and white photos over color.

The battery light on my camera actually started blinking when I began photographing, so I attempted to take as many photos in as little time as possible. I took the photos of people swimming until my battery died out and then went into the lagoon myself. I realized my error afterward and then caught the color photos with a lucky, last heave-ho my battery made after sitting in the dressing room for a time thus, the blue-watered photo included. This photo is of a pool outside the lagoon, but of the same color water. I am happy I was able to get this so you can see how nice.

Besides all of this, it was difficult to photograph and focus on my goal of ultimate photo coverage when there was this luring pool of warm, mineral saturated water calling me into it.

It was fantastic, the water, a nice 104 degrees F., and though it was sunny, a cool breeze made it more tolerable. I just waded slowly around each corner of the lagoon until I found a nice slope I could sit on with my waist down submerged in the spring. For whatever reason, sitting there I had the sudden, overwhelming realization of how bizarre it was that I was in Iceland. I never thought much of it until this point. I never imagined I would go to Iceland. Pretty wild.

I had met no Swedes (I study Swedish language) so far on my travels and was suddenly surrounded by the glorious sounds of the Swedish language. Thinking I was pretty cool, I spotted a mother and her sons close by and said in Swedish, “so, you guys are from Sweden?” I probably had one of those, “oh yeah, check me out” looks on my face.

“We’re actually from Norway,” she said back in Norwegian. We had a cute, short-lived conversation until I had to ask her to repeat herself too many times because I got caught up by some of her Norwegian words, and we both knew we could speak English and move along at a much nicer pace.

Her husband came over and we all three spoke for a while. They asked me questions about my future plans, reasons for speaking Swedish, being in Iceland, etc. (the worst questions to ask me) and I spoke at length about my opinions regarding the U.S. and its current political and social situation. They listened politely until they realized I wasn’t going tell them I think the world should be forced to embrace some watered-out, neo-fundamentalist, evangelical, North American version of Christianity and agree to support the U.S. in whatever evidence-absent, financially driven, conspiracy-based, hopefully Armageddon-inducing war on “terror,” our unwise and hopelessly incompetent, small minded, ape-like president stutters for support for while attempting, nervously, to discern the babble someone with a lot more verbal richness and personal gain at stake, is whispering into his ear through his head set.

They then unloaded some of their problems they had with the U.S. onto me in a quick fit, but, bored with being all serious and concerned (everyone does, I need to calm down) and clearly happy to have met such a strange bird in a strange place, they said goodbye politely and left.

Anyhow, Iceland is famous for its harnessing of volcanic energy through the use of geothermal power-plants. I wont pretend to know tons about it, but they dig deep boreholes into the ground and channel the boiling water up into the power plant, which utilizes both the boiling water itself, and the steam it produces to perpetuate the process of pumping the hot water, and the resultant freshwater, to outlying locations. I went to the famous Nesjavellir Geothermal power plant, which I was going to include a whole entry on, but did not photograph enough of. The funding was given from a number of different countries and Japanese engineers helped produce it. The location is stunning, and the machinery impressive. I recommend having a look online, where you will likely find a good description of the process.