Iceland is to nature as Rome is to history. It is a place of natural grandeur and awe. What will strike you most about Iceland is the range of different landscape you will experience. Each one is so distinct and just as beautiful as the last. While on the bus you could look out the window and see miles and miles of moss-covered rocks projecting vibrant greens found in old time fairy tales.
They will remind you of the little moss-covered trolls from the movie Frozen. If you look away from the windows for just a moment, the next time you glance outside the landscape will have completely changed. Suddenly you will be climbing up a mountain road with yellow and orange shrubbery dotting the land cut with hundreds of tiny streams. The moss-covered rocks are enveloped in fog that crept in slowly, like sleep. The landscape changes then disappears. Moments later you will emerge from these clouds of smoke and you will be atop a mountain pass looking out over vast stretches of old lava to one side and new lava to the other. And if you keep looking you will see fields of green grass and so many rivers.
Icelandic horses dot the countryside and if you look up at the right time you’ll see the thickest layer of clouds you’ll ever see, stretched across the sky like a giant blanket. Then perhaps to your right you will spot the most vibrantly colorful rainbow. Every aspect of nature we find beautiful is present in Iceland but magnified. The dramatic cliffsides with violent waves crashing and wind whipping your body around in a way you didn’t know wind was capable of.
The black sand beaches with giant slabs of ice scattered like diamonds. Stretches of green and flashes of the orange leaves of fall and glacier tongues bigger than you could have imagined. Waterfalls everywhere, and each one just as spectacular as the last. There is nothing like standing at the top of a waterfall with the spray on your skin and the roar of the waterfall tearing through you. That force reminds you how powerful nature is.
When you visit Iceland, every day you are overcome with the overwhelming feeling that you are alive. There is no mistake that it is nature that makes us feel this way. The country is a beautiful amalgamation of landscapes that are so distinctly different, and yet fit together so perfectly. You will never forget the feeling of standing atop that waterfall, or the taste of the homemade buttered bread from the Icelandic horse farm, or the unnerving feeling of disappearing into a thick fog and the excitement of what might be on the other side of it. You will feel everything you are experiencing deeply in a way only nature can illicit. You will be blown away. You will wonder why it took you so long to get here.
