Iceland – fifty shades of grey
“Picture yourself in a boat on a river
With tangerine trees and marmalade skies”
Of all places on earth, Iceland would easily qualify as the “Lucy in the sky with diamonds” country. Nothing on earth can prepare one for the sheer strangeness of the place. The youngest island on earth at about 20 million years, torn apart by brutal tectonic forces, practically devoid of trees, fields of lava covered in moss, steam creeping from the ground, plumes of volcanic ash and the largest glaciers in Europe. Lying close to the Arctic Circle, surrounded by vast stretches of ocean, one is constantly surprised at the fact that people have been living here for more than a thousand years.
From the minute one lands just outside Reykjavik, every texture and colour is strange to the eye. Mostly ashen, the first thing you see is the azure water of the Blue Lagoon, a world-class resort where hot water from a power station is pumped into a lake where people come from all over the world. Then the patinas of the mosses greet your eyes, followed by fifty shades of (grey) ash colors. Water as clear as gin flows in the fast rivers, fed from Europe’s largest glaciers, over waterfalls of beauty and power that surprises you time and time again.
People ask me why I rate Iceland as my favourite destination on earth. With total conviction I can say that Iceland feeds my eye, my imagination and every other sensory faculty. It is the one place on earth that I constantly rediscover myself through nature: nature clothed in its most raw and beautiful wardrobe.
- By Dave Pepler
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