Tuesday, April 19, 2011

What Is So Hot In Iceland?

So what's so hot in Iceland? Well, other than the volcanoes that erupt and disrupt the whole western hemisphere's airline business, it's the hot water. The hot springs.

Iceland has an amazing quantity of geysers and hot springs. So much of it, in fact, that they use it to produce electricity, warm up their houses (it's really, really warm wherever you go - indoors), use it as tap hot water (it smells of sulfur really strongly), warm up green houses enough to grow tomatoes!


They even warm up the pavements to eliminate snow in winter! Although this last thing hasn't been introduced everywhere, not yet.
But wait, this isn't all: they pour hot spring water into a small roped-off marine lagoon to make sea bathing bearable! It's a very popular beach in summer, although most people still prefer a dip in a man-made swimming pool, where sea water is being heated up using the hot spring water. But some people (the brave ones) go right in the 15 degrees seawater.

I heard a lot about saunas being part of German social life, and of Japanese life, too - well, in Iceland the social life happens in outdoors swimming pools, year-round. Yes, outdoors. The water - you guessed it - is heated using the hot spring water. It takes a lot of courage to cross those couple of dozens of feet from the changing room to the hot pot and enjoy the heat (there are some as hot as 42 degrees - Celsius, that is) - see the pots on the left, each with their own temperature:



or you can choose to make a few laps in a swimming pool, covered with evaporating steam and heads bobbing up and down the swimming lanes, just barely visible in all the fog.

Overall, it being a vacation, it was really nice to be able to spend some time swimming and splashing. George even braved one of the slides.

In the middle there, under the bridge, you can see a group playing basketball. We played, too - and what a lousy sight we were! But we enjoyed it, until we got cold and went back to hot pots. Where most people come and seat and talk after walk. You see a lot of Icelanders there - and really not e lot of tourists. Almost none, in fact.

Overall - I wish we had a swimming pool like this here, in Toronto, Although I am pretty sure it would be extremely costly. In Iceland, with all the hot water pouring out of the earth? Mere 4 bucks for entrance.



You have to undress and go take a shower stark naked. No stalls provided. They even drew diagrams for you to remember which parts of your body need to be washed (underarms, genitals - all of it, LOL). My advice? Do not wash your hair. My head was FREEZING out there, even though I kept diving frequently to warm it up. 

Funny memory: as I was carrying my photocamera from the locker room to the swimming pool, through the shower room area, a woman attacked me angrily. Oops. The lens of my camera wasn't covered so she thought I was filming them all, naked!

But this is all civilization. Of course, there are many natural pools and springs, but you have to know for sure which ones you can dip in. These two look blue and serene, don't they?

Well, it's from 80 to 100 degrees - almost boiling! Well, the boiling ones are easy to spot (they do boil, you see) but the ones that are 80 degrees... just as dangerous, but look quite harmless. 


Oh, and no change rooms or ice cream shacks there. Just pure, wild nature experience.

You can bathe only when hot springs are being mixed with cold mountain rivers. Here, you can see George warming up his hands, soaking wet and cold from all the rain. The water in this lovely stream was just bearably hot. Probably too hot for dipping, though.


The most famous place - with tourists - for outdoors swimming year round is the Blue Lagoon - which came by as a by-product of a power plant nearby (how unromantic). The water is seawater from 2,000 metres deep boreholes, heated with hot spring steam. It's really hot and reach in salts and minerals. This one is all about civilization: you pay 35 Euros for entrance, there are restaurants and toilets and showers, and even sauna and steam room.


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