Lake Myvatn, inside a glacier ... and the Northern Lights!

What an amazing couple of days in northern Iceland, and what an extraordinary place this is.

Yesterday (Tuesday) morning we left Akureyri for Lake Myvatn, a 2 hour drive south and into the mountains. We left Akureryi at a respectable hour, driving around the fjord that the town is built along.

Once into the mountains we turned south to Lake Myvatn, arriving late morning. The lake is in an area of active volcanoes, and its surrounding wetlands have an exceptionally rich fauna of waterbirds, especially ducks and geese.

The sun was shining with puffy clouds billowing above the mountains. The waters of the lake sparkled and in some places were still iced up. It was blissful to be in sunshine, and we drove around the periphery stopping to look at the sights.

The first was unexpected and unusual - "Fast & Furious 8" is being filmed here. We weren't able to get close but saw the set out on the ice - and while we were having lunch, heard a massive "kaboom" & saw a dark cloud rising in the distance - hopefully this was part of the movie!

Vidar took us to the Vogafjoss Cowshed Cafe for lunch - a cowshed indeed.  The cows were still in the barn, attached to the cafe - they were lying around eating hay while on the other side of a glass wall, we were sitting and eating a delicious lunch!

Further around the lake we came across a rather gorgeous white Iceland horse - the photo shows our guide, Vidar, having "a moment" with it. Many farms have herds of these stocky, lovable & hardy animals and don't seem to mind tourists pulling up in their driveways to touch and photograph them.  The horses love the attention too!

As we made our way towards our hotel for the night (Hotel Laxa), we came across a flock of geese & some ducks. The photo shows two geese taking off as we came close to take photos.

Then to the Laxa, keeping an eye on the skies - would the clouds stay away? Would an Aurora show itself as predicted? Would we freeze in the process?The answer to each of these was a resounding "yes!"

During the afternoon we had scoped out places for viewing and photographing the northern lights. It would have been great to have them reflecting in Lake Myvatn, but without a car, this wasn't possible, & Vidar needed his sleep ahead of our drive south on Wednesday. So we made do with the hotel's car park.

At around 10:30pm we saw some streaks of green across the sky - pulling together & donning all our gear including cameras, head lamps, tripods etc, we managed some good shots from one area of the car park. But with a breeze blowing it was getting mighty cold, and we headed inside just before midnight.

I rolled over at around 12:45 and looked outside to see a much brighter streak and movement. All our gear was ready and waiting for us, so we were back outside in about 10 mins. This was a wow! Curtains of green were flowing across the sky - it looked as if there was more colour now, and I managed to capture the photo below.

The colours would fade and grow in intensity, waves of green light flowing across the sky. At one point there was very rapid movement - accompanied by shrieks of delight from 2 cold but very happy women. Awesome indeed!

By about 1:30 or so it was time to come in and get some sleep, of course checking the photos via the back of the camera first. We were leaving at 6am for the long drive back to Reykjavik with the walk inside a glacier, on the way - a little sleep would be a good thing!

We had hoped that the glacier walk, cancelled on Sunday would be possible today. Vidar was hopeful that he would be able to drive us up the glacier, stopping at the entrance to the "cave" that has been constructed to allow access inside the glacier.

Other than a total whiteout that meant that Vidar was navigating solely by his GPS and markers in the snow, all went to plan. Although a little delayed, we finally entered the glacier and walked through the tunnels that were carved out by 5-7 men last year. We saw crevasses from an angle best viewed only in this way, and learned about the way in which this glacier is slowly moving and spreading.

It's an amazing engineering feat, and the guide that took us through was fascinating - he even surprised us with a song when we were in the "Chapel." His voice was beautiful.

From the glacier it was time to come back to Reykjavik - I'm now more or less packed and looking forward to a few hours sleep before being driven to the airport at 5am.

The long flights back will provide me with lots of time to catch up with photos and to provide one final Iceland post.

For now, there is no doubt that no trip to Iceland would be complete without a visit to the northern parts of this country. And I expect that there's much more to see in other areas - but that will have to wait for another trip.