July 4th and 5th, by Max

July 4th                       

Building with lava

We saw lots of steam on the way back from the Blue Lagoon; we were at the Blue Lagoon because after discovering that we had left our swimsuits in the lockers there we were in a rush to get them back, so we drove over there. While my mom was inside me, cedar, and my dad played with lava in the parking lot building towers with them and running all over it and cedar constantly asking are we being quiet (we were not speaking much) because if the volcano hears us it will burn us? While we were doing this we also found some pumice.

We saw a bunch of Icelandic horses, it was amazing. The way there so short but are completely like horses it was amazing! Also, it was obvious they loved people. As soon as we got out of the car they ran over to the closest part of the fence to us, we walked over to them and started petting the top of their heads, the whole time my mom going YOU ARE BEAUTIFUL. We finally got cold and so we decided to go back inside, when we got to the car, we saw that my dad had the whole time been looking at his emails, so we decided to say “on three” “you’re crazy” so we got in said that, and he said “look there are some horses over there.” And then he got out walked over to the horses and looked at them for 15 minutes, we were annoyed. Another time we saw three Icelandic colts, they were the size of dogs! While we were driving away my mom told us that she had read that Icelandic horses, once they leave Iceland aren’t allowed to come back.

Colts

After that we went to a little fishing village where we saw a cod museum (yes a cod museum) where we learned about how cod links in with the history of Iceland. When I say cod I mean dried cod. First we learned about how the national crest of Iceland is a salted and filleted cod, with a crown. (Laughs). Then we learned about how to make cod salted and dried, it’s very laborious, first you fillet it, than you stack a bunch with salt in between, let it sit, than sun dry it, than you repeat it as many times as it takes until you have a hard piece of fish. Our dinner was a really great one of salmon burgers. 

The steam we saw on the way back from the Blue Lagoon was from these great mud pits heated up to a high enough temperature to bubble mud!  So here you are standing in front of a pit listening to bubbling mud and clamping your nose shut (because of all the sulphur) and then suddenly your mom shouts “Look over there, there’s more!”  And so you and Cedar are coughing because of the smell and you have to walk around 7 of these. Cedar stays in the car and then my mom has to watch her, so my dad and I go walking through these. I live through the smell, so we set out to go to the giant mud hole at the top of the 1 1/2km mountain that is supersteep.  My Dad, while we’re going up, keeps reassuring me that down is harder because there are a lot of slippy parts from the pebbles.  When we get to the top the view is amazing, although the mud pits are not so exciting.  When we go down we either go super slow or we run, and it works!

        July 5th

The day started with us all getting up at the same time.  Going on the trampoline, and having a halibut/eggs breakfast.  Then we drove into the city center of Reykjavik, the first thing we noticed were bars showing on tv billiards, instead of tennis or a actual sports they have pool! Speaking of bars we saw in one street The English pub, The Icelandic bar, and Café Paris. Then we walked on the oldest street in Iceland.  It was built in the 800’s!  We took lots of photos of nice chairs

and we saw an exhibit called 871 + 2.  The exhibit was all about how people in Norway first came to Iceland.  It was a great exhibit but they were trying out new technology that they couldn’t quite handle.  For lunch we tried out kaviar paste on crackers with cream cheese.  The kaviar was interesting because instead of just eating it as eggs you would squeeze it out of a toothpaste tube.

Then we went to the world’s 2^nd largest geothermal power plant, they’re able to send water at 192⁰ f 24km with it only letting away 4⁰ f!  In Iceland they even heat up soccer fields with hot water! They are able to produce 340 megawatts of electricity, and only 170 of it is used for reykjavik! Soon they’re going to send electricity to all over Europe!

 After that we saw a place with such hot geothermal grounds they could put a greenhouse over a outlet of it and grow bananas! So you would think that of course they had hot water, you would be wrong, they had boiling water! So hot you can boil an egg in it, so we did. For less than a dollar, me and cedar got eggs and weird fishing poles with nets at the end to hold the eggs. So first thing we did was walk out and we see this HUGE bunch of steam coming from a big cylinder, than we walked by bubbling and steaming streams until we got to a pot in the water made to trap hot water, cedar decided to put her egg in the bowl, but I wanted next to it. So we put our eggs there, waited half a minute, and walked away. They had a lot of hot springs, one called “big hot spring” a 24 ft deep hole mostly filled with water at just under boiling tempeture. another was “garbage hot spring.” It’s story was there used to be a garbage pit there, and then the geothermal heat made it explode! So after being educated we went back to the eggs and picked them up. We let them cool and then brought them over to the cracking area. We spun the eggs and so we thought they were hard and then cracked them open, they were soft, so we ate them with a spoon. Yum. After eating, we took a foot bath in newly dug up mud. It was great, the mud just slipped around your feet in a certain great way that you never wanted to leave. It was very hard to get it off but we finally did.                                                          Then we (sadly) had to leave.

PS. Lava is hardened magma that has turned into rocks, magma is the actual firey liquid/solid.