Lights, Camera, Action!

Isnt' this just a gorgeous photo of my niece Marcella? This was sent to me on Friday for my birthday, how cute. Check out Beck's blog for more cute Marcella pics...

So when I left you in my previous comment it was Thursday night, we´d braved the icy roads and snow (and wind!) and arrived in Grundarfjördur at the hostel. By this time it was dark, and the skies looked clear (and cold), so we decided to go and try to look for Northern lights. Packing up our trusty "go look at Northern lights" kit, which consisted this time of pot noodles (with the boiling water already in), thermos, sandwiches and chips, plus our "equipment" (as Agnieszka likes to call it - camcorder and camera), we set off in the car. But its dark, the roads are very icy, and there´s still a bit of a snowstorm (well the wind is blowing snow viciously sideways across our path making it difficult to see when driving). To see the Northern lights (scientific name: aurora borealis) you really need to be away from the artificial lights of the cities, you need a clear sky, cold night... Anyway we sat out in the car for about 3 hours and I wasn´t convinced we had actually seen anything. The pictures you see in the postcards are always so dramatic (see my first comment on Iceland), with deep green or red colours booming across the night sky dramatically - all we saw was a curved greenish tinged line over what appeared to a huge mountain, and a plume of whitish (with a green tinge) light faintly streaming up from the horizon. I didn´t think that was it, but when we got back to the hostel it seems everyone else had seen it too and was convinced that it was the Northern lights. Me, I felt a bit deflated actually.

So, Friday - my birthday. We wake up and there´s streaming daylight (well after 9.30am anyway once the sun gets up), there is, get this, no wind, HALLELUJAH! (I´ve renamed Iceland to Windland), so we set off driving around the peninsula. We get to the next major town, Olafsvik, and Agnieszka suggests a coffee in the bakery, what the hey, its my birthday, lets have a pastry too. Turns out that the owner of the bakery is Polish, and her sister comes in for a chat, so Agnieszka starts to find out about sightseeing etc. I´m happily writing a postcard, I don´t pay attention - next thing the sister starts to talk to me, then the brother comes and starts chatting. I thought this was all a bit wierd. We were there forever it seemed.

After this we head off around the peninsula, the countryside really is very beautiful. We wanted to go snowmobiling but the weather is, get this, too cold, too much snow etc for it, so we keep driving and we find this black beach (black because of the lava fields - you have to remember this area is volcanic too). This was very interesting, had a bit of a walk around etc, then more driving, and more photographing, and that basically was the day.

Because its so expensive here we decide to go to the supermarket and cook up something for dinner. I was feeling a little disappointed as hey, its my birthday, and I´m having spaghetti bolognaise in a youth hostel, when suddenly in comes Agnieszka singing "happy birthday" and holding a chocolate cake with (get this) 35 candles on it.

Turns out that whilst we were in the bakery she took the opportunity to buy the cake by speaking in Polish to the woman (as I wouldn´t understand it) and that´s why the sister and brother came over and chatted to me, to distract me. How cool is that? The cake was very yummy too.

After this we decide to head off in search of more Northern lights, having discovered that the place where we thought we saw some last night (and then decided it was snow blowing off a mountain) actually didn´t have a mountain there at all, which meant we probably saw some. We´re driving along, and then suddenly we see streams of greenish tinged light across the sky, not as dramatic as the postcards, but most definitely northern lights. I was sooo thrilled, fancy seeing them properly on my birthday. So I got out, set up the tripod, and took a lot of pictures. The bummer with not having a digital SLR is that I couldn't tell if they worked. But here's one that I took anyway...

Not bad, eh?

Not a bad first attempt, eh?