We don't really take many pictures together, but I'd always wanted to try the Leica M3's self timer. My dad's Minolta SR-T 303b had the same thing -- a lever on the front that you turn to the side, revealing a button underneath. You wind the lever, and then when you're ready you hit the button and the camera starts buzzing like a wind-up toy and you have an indeterminate length of time to get into position to watch it wind down until it finally fires the shutter. Some of my earliest memories are of watching that lever slowly wind its way back.
The last leg of our tour was the Snaefellsness Peninsula, about 90 minutes north of Reykjavik. At the end is the Snaefellsjokull national park, named for the glacier-capped Snaefellsjokull mountain, which was the entrance point for Jules Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth.
We didn't climb the mountain, and we didn't see much of it either; most of it was shrouded by the heavy cloud cover we had that day. It perfectly fine, though, because the whole peninsula was just as scenic as the rest of Iceland. The north is a calm, sheltered drive that will take you across gaping fjords and peaceful mountain passes. The south is a heavily worn coastline, populated by brave sea birds unafraid of the crashing waves of the North Atlantic.
We did manage to see Songhellir, or "Song Cave". It's a weird network of tunnels bored, presumably by lava, into the side of Snaefellsjokull. It gets its name from the deep reverberations you hear when you step inside and make sounds. If you've ever messed around with an audio effects processor and maxed out the "reverb" knob, it would sound a lot like what you hear in Songhellir; you feel it in your chest. Because of this, the cave was a popular site for rituals. The walls are covered in runes and more recent graffiti.
We ended our trip with two calm days in Reykjavik, just wandering around and getting mentally prepared for the trip back home. We could probably have spent the time exploring even further out onto the island, but we felt we had seen enough for one trip and promised each other we'd come back to see the rest.
I'm out of things to say about Iceland and I'm not really sure how to conclude it, so I'll just put out the rest of the photos and call it a day. I hope you enjoyed the photos, and I hope it encourages you to visit Iceland and see for yourself. I can't imagine there being a way to do it wrong. The trip was very loosely planned. We would set a destination the night before, book a hotel there, and set out in the morning, stopping at anything remotely interesting along the way. Every time we pulled over to take a closer look at something, it was totally worth it.
By the way, there's some pretty good ice cream in Reykjavik. Try the Turkish pepper flavor.
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