The Rembis Report and Other Fascinating Topics - Volume C - That's #100!

What’s so amazing, Mike?

That I wrote a hundred essays.

I think it is more amazing that anyone reads them.

Okay, wiseguy, that’s enough! But seriously folks, thanks again for tuning in each week, reading my stuff, sending me feedback, and sharing it with your friends. I really appreciate all the support.

To kickoff this landmark edition, I want to let you know what a terrible photographer I am. I went all the way to Iceland, snapped about a thousand pictures, and I think I got five pretty good shots.

Iceland is aptly named for its abundance of ice. Glaciers cover 11% of the island. Yes, the ice really is that blue, and mesmerizing. I didn’t do anything more strenuous than walk a few steps down short trails or take pictures from the road, but more daring adventurers are hiking onto the glaciers fully geared up for arctic conditions, with spikes on their feet and ice axes in hand.

You really don’t have to go far away from your car to see glaciers, waterfalls, or recently calved icebergs heading out to sea.

Waterfalls are seemingly endless. They are everywhere. I don’t think anyone has counted them all, but I have to agree with the guesstimate that there are well over 10,000 waterfalls in all of Iceland. They just get more and more spectacular every time you see one. But there is no such thing as a bad waterfall. And when the sun is out they all sport a rainbow.

While sunlight was rare, daylight was not. It was mostly cloudy and bright 24/7. I am not a fan of starless nights. I only saw northern lights on the plane ride there, when we were flying over Canada, near Greenland. After a while, you sort of get accustomed to constant daylight and only a few hours of twilight. If you happen to wake up between one and three in the morning, and you are in a valley, the sun may be below your immediate horizon. But you can still see everything.

We drove 1,700 miles in two weeks. The GPS tracker we had recorded our route around the country.

No vacation is complete without a few selfies. This is me and my dear, sweet wife Ellen at the far end of Europe, Latrabjarg, in the Westfjords, as west as west gets before the ocean makes way to the western hemisphere.

We came here for the bird cliffs, to see puffins. We had seen them in Alaska, but not up close, and even here, they were tough to get a look at. The thing is, you stand on top of the cliff, teetering above where they are all nesting below you, a sheer 1,400 foot drop to the rocks and crashing waves. The highest nesting spots edge into view sparingly and if you are lucky, you get something like this.

This is the only puffin I got a picture of. I saw several, but that pesky camera - you have heard me complain about it before - fought me on focus, and of course, it was windy and I had no tripod, so standing in the 40F wind made it a challenge. I did manage to capture a little white feather as it blew toward me in the grass. It might have been from a seagull, or a razor-billed auk, but I kept it as a souvenir and like to imagine that it once belonged to a puffin.

I told you about the Geocache where I dropped a trackable. This is the old WWII US Navy plane where it resides. You have to crawl in under where the wings were once attached. It is a home for birds now. Several dormant nests are wedged between the frame and cockpit wiring.

The eccentric fellow who bought the plane intended to put it all back together, but never did. He built a museum that tells the story of his little corner of the world, complete with tools for hunting everything you can hunt in Iceland and the baubles of daily life. He died a few years ago. The museum next to the plane is maintained. It is an amazing collection and includes a movie that tells the bizarre story of a sea rescue in 1947 when an English fishing trawler ran aground nearby. I watched the film documenting the rescue that I thought was a reenactment, but no, it is actual footage of another rescue. The year after the rescue, a filmmaker came to the area to meet the Icelandic rescuers and photograph the cliffs. I don’t know if he had intended to stage a reenactment, however, while he was there, another ship ran aground at almost the same spot, and once again, the locals sprang into action. This time, a man with a camera was there to document it.

My friend Karl, who runs Hotel Latrabjarg, where we stayed, told me this. Growing up there as a kid he knew all the rescuers. His father was one of them. They were all adept at climbing the cliffs to hunt for eggs. Karl did so himself many times. I looked for the video online but can’t find it. Apparently it is only being shown in that museum. Karl also told me what he knew about the sailors who could not be saved. This was not mentioned in the film. Some of the English sailors had resigned themselves that rescue was impossible and that they would soon die, so they broke out the liquor and drank. It took hours for the locals to get down the cliff and set up ropes. When they reached the sinking vessel they could only save the sober ones. Some men had drunk themselves so badly into oblivion that they could not even stand. They had to be left behind.

You can travel all over the world via the internet, for sure, but when it comes to details, you can’t beat the locals for the real juice. Karl also told me about place names, in particular Vik, which I had seen many times throughout the country on road signs, or at the end of town names, like Reykjavík. He said that Vik means inlet (from the sea) and that Vikings are people from the inlet. So, technically, everyone who lives near an inlet is a viking. Who knew? I love learning stuff like this.

There is a ton of other stuff to see and do in Iceland and this is just a small taste. Thanks for joining me on this tour. I hope you enjoyed it. I will let you know when I post the full collection of photos, and in upcoming editions, I will tell you more about what’s wrong with my picture taking (particularly when it comes to nighttime photography), how bad I am at finding Geocaches, and all about how the giant grasshopper in my garden is doing.

Thanks for reading.

If you are new to the Rembis Report and would like to read any of the previous issues, PLEASE CLICK HERE to access the archives. To read it from the beginning, PLEASE GET A COPY of The Rembis Report: An Observation.