Iceland

Iceland. A gorgeous, amazing, distinctual country. Living in Washington state was an incredibly beautiful experience for the striking mountainous landscape. Iceland is more like another planet with hot springs nestled all around the country, northern lights, Mars-like scenery with geothermal baths and a crater lake on top of a mountain, erupting volcanoes, and fun wildlife and sea creatures like puffins, reindeer, beluga whales, and arctic foxes. If you like to be a part of nature and have unique experiences, this is the country for you to explore.

The largest city is Reykjavik, which has more of a population like a large town in the U.S., has a unique and colorful architecture and culture. The rest of the country is mostly farmland and land that cannot be accessed due to its rugged landscape. Interestingly enough, there are not many forests or trees in this country as the Vikings chopped down all the trees to use for lumber as a resource to live thousands of years ago. Another fun fact we learned was that there are more sheep in this country than people. After visiting here, we can totally see that!

Along our 12-day fully-packed clockwise road trip, my great friend and travel buddy Rachel and I managed to see much of what the country has to offer any tourist. Before you click on the links below, I’d like to share a story that humbled me to my core. Almost everyone in Iceland we encountered was kind hearted and genuinely just plain good. One of our last days in the country, we encountered a woman on the Westman Islands, an area known for where puffins like to migrate and reproduce in the summer, southeast of Reykjavik. As this was the end of the summer season, most of the puffins had already gone off into the ocean to migrate south for the wintertime. So all that we might be able to spot were people carrying cardboard boxes holding the pufflings they found in the streets and releasing them to the ocean by the cliffs on the west side of the island.

We walked by these cliffs trying to spot someone carrying a cardboard box and by good golly we did! Rachel and I ran as fast as we could to this one woman but by the time we got to her she had already released the puffling. Right after she tossed it she saw us running toward her and we told her our scenario. She felt so awful for not waiting one more minute and showed us pictures on her phone of all the pufflings she saved that season. She told us that she delivers meals to older folk on the island for her job and happened across this puffling in the road today. She was from Ukraine and had left her home country because of the war. She then cried as she said what she learned from her experiences of the war is that every living thing counts and that if she can save even just one life then it’s worth it. I wish I had taken a picture with her as her story truly deserves to be told!