Cast:
Me
Roy
Frosti - our tour guide
Frosti stopped by the apartment late Monday afternoon (luckily we had just gotten home a bit before from our walk to the park) to discuss Tuesday's plans because we were going to be out in the middle of nowhere for 8-10 hours.
He had been wanting to stop by the headquarters of the main geothermal power plant because of some art installations that had been put into place and then by the power plant itself so we could get a quick tour to hear how it all goes down.
Of course we were up for it. With all of the culture we have already experienced, why not keep the party going with the unexpected. And it was. For being such a major force in the future of energy production, the people working for Orkuveita Reykjavik (they own 93% of Iceland's geothermal power and water supply) are extremely welcoming and are more than happy to guide the curious around and teach them about what they do for the community.
While waiting for our guide Frosty pointed out a "string" hanging from the top of the 10 story building swaying back and forth. Peering over the edge of the lobby was a metal cone connected to the "string." It constantly swayed because of the earth's magnetic force and had 26 wooden posts around the circle that it knocked down throughout the day. As the earth rotates so does the circle and it actually takes about 26 hours for the earth to have a full rotation. At the end of the day, there are copper holes below the fallen wood that blow a puff of air and set the wood back up for the start of a new day. Picture will be on the next post.
He then took us in for a sneak preview of an exhibit they are putting together in the in-house gallery called 100degrees. Its an installation that will feature prominent Icelandic artist's paintings, sculpture and water works to illustrate the power of water. Its an infant stage but he explained where things would be and what it would represent. Ask me later and I'll explain. Its hard to type without it not making sense.
Took the lift into the basement where we got to experience a sound installation. Walking through the break room (the whole basement with pool tables, chess boards, computers and a cafe) we walked into a dark room that automatically had a light come on when we walked in. A single light pointed at the base of another cable hanging from the middle of the ceiling, at the end of it was a subwoofer speaker. On the left and right were benches recessed into the darkness. A pool of water just below the speaker. Sitting there quietly the light triggers the cable to send a pulse through to the speaker that gradually gets faster, vibrating the water that reflects onto the wall filling the room with a heavy bass drone and vibrating your whole body. Simple yet intense. Set on repeat every minute for 5 minutes. Next post has video.
From there we left Reykjavik to tour the power plant itself. I won't go into much detail because its a bit hard to explain without the biggest touch screen monitor I'll probably ever see. I'm talking 8 feet tall by 12 feet wide. All I'll say is that its amazing how they have created an amazingly efficient, renewable and inexpensive energy/water source. And the fact that they aren't the only country that can be doing this. They just aren't as greedy and SOME parts of the rest of the world can be.
On to Mt. Hekla. Frosti had told us the day before that there was a big possibility we would encounter some snow and that it was a bit rare this early in the fall/winter season. Once you leave Reykjavik, its a whole new world you could never prepare yourself for. I know I touched on it a bit with The Blue Lagoon blog but this is a whole other monster. From rolling hills into mountains formed by volcano ash, lava flow and millions of years of seismic activity, Iceland grows by 2cm every year because the Euro-Asian plate and North American plate that run split the country in two sliding apart. We would have taken pictures of that but ran out of battery. Over 200 pics and video were taken.
I've told some of you that the interior of Iceland is really drivable... and for non-locals or tour guides, I definitely don't suggest it because there aren't really "roads" to travel by. They are lava pebble country roads that seemingly lead to nowhere. This whole time I never looked at my watch because we're in friggin' Iceland and I have nowhere to be but in that van and whenever we get back is when we get back.
The landscape slowly started to change as we gradually ascended up these mountains from grays and browns with hints of green moss and red somethings to black... everywhere. Mountains of black that eventually had specs of white. These mountains are so hard to describe and only the photos can express without being here what it feels like. At one point Frosti started feeling sketchy because within a week that he had been out there, some intense snow had fallen and because Iceland is one of the windiest places on the planet, there was no telling what we'd encounter on the road and we weren't in a super jeep to be able to handle snow that was too deep. After a few hairy turns and somewhat deep snow on the road it cleared up again until we literally came to a landslide of snow that had settled on the road making it impossiblt to cross without a super jeep. These are SUVs that have been outfitted with massive tires that can be flattened in order to crawl over volcanic rocks and snow. Not the stupid massive tires that dumbass rednecks and douchebags put on their trucks for overcompensation.
It was the end of the road for us to Mt. Hekla. We snapped a few pictures and some video and had to turn around.
Too be continued...
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