Helga and Julie go camping

Icelanders, much to my surprise, do not camp in tents.

As a gal raised on canoe tripping (car camping is foreign to me) I was entertained by many aspects of my whirlwind tour of northern Iceland. Helga and I arrived to find the camping section of the site deserted, while the trailer section was full. (Luckily, they were separated by a few kilometres of road.)

We set up our tent, portable table and chairs and unloaded the cooler and then proceeded on to Mosquito Lake (the only place in Iceland where the little buggers exist - though minimal by Canadian standards). Here we toured around some small volcanic craters and a huge area of bizarre volcanic formations known as Dimmuborgir.

The natural beauty was, once again, breathtaking - will post photos on Flickr next week - but the true highlight (for its novelty) was the disposable BBQ, followed closely by the frozen packaged hamburger kit. I was doubtful about the whole thing, but in the end this doubter had a delicious dinner at 10:30pm just as darkness was setting in...

And yes, it was chilly.

You can read more about the curious relationship between Icelanders and camping in this editorial from the Reykjavik Grapevine, an English-language bi-weekly newspaper.