Northern lights

For my first post in english I would like to tell you guys about my trip to the actual ice and fire land, this magnificent island full of eccentric landscapes ... The closest place I have ever been from an extraterrestrial world ( everything in Iceland looks different for the eyes of a continental commun human been like me). Starting with the weather, so unpredictable and capricious that changes at it's own will; Icelandic folks have a very known saying (time for the cliche), "If you don't like the weather in Iceland, just wait fifteen minutes". At the arrival, I have to admit that it was the only time I have been really scare of being in an airplane (I’m not afraid of flying at all), thanks to the strong wind stopping us from landing; everytime the pilot tried to land, it kept repelling us and the plane kept swinging like It if was a small kite; eventually we got to land but had to wait for like half an hour for the wind to ease .

During our first city walk in Reykjavik, it haild, rained, and even snowed a little just before leading us to an incredible sunny and not to cold weather (in the middle of the winter). Reykjavik is a small city, you could even think it hasn't changed for the last century; the small houses with sharp pointed roofs decorated with steam columns on top of them, it's just what I use to imagine about Santa’s town when I was a kid.

It was everything amazing in that place, but I wasn't able to take the thought of being under the northern lights out of my mind; it was no child's play though. To be able to see the Aurora Borealis at least a couple of things need to collide, a clear sky, hight sun activity and being as far as possible from city lights. In that occasion we got tour tickets to see them from an icelandic enterprise dedicated specifically to take tourist to the places with best “aurora forecast” but it was canceled for bad weather so we decided not to give up and go on our own to a small peninsula with a lighthouse at the edge of the city (in a place called Seltjarnarnes) but after waiting for hours out the in the cold and windy night with no more company than the lightless lighthouse, nothing, nothing but clouds and mist wetting us to the bone.

Walking back to the inn, a little bit tired but not to disappointed (we felt like fine explorers) because we felt that we had had a good time no matter what, so we kept looking up to the sky with a very small but persistent hope of seeing them as we walked through the empty streets of Reykjavik at three in the morning. Suddenly, we saw this strange long cloud turning green hiding behind the Hallgrímskirkja (Reykjavik’s church), so we ran as fast as we could to get it in sight… And there it was… Magnificent… I remember we stayed there for more than twenty minutes or so standing there as amused as we surely had not felt in years.