Greetings from the midnight sun!
Greetings from Iceland.
We are now happily ensconced in our new home for the next two months. Two days before we flew out from the UK we received an email from Icelandic Mountain Guides to say that they were busy and wanted us to start work as soon as we got to Iceland. So much for our planned settling in over a few days. We were meet in Reykjavik (the capital) at one in the morning and taken back to the managers flat to kip on the floor for a few hours. Then at seven am we were up and off to the bus station and on to the bus to the glacier. About half way there, after three hours we were dropped off in the middle of a rural high way in the rain with instructions to find a farm house and rent a 17 seat bus off the farmer and continue on our way. I had visions of this all turning into a total epic but the Icelandic people and very helpful and friendly (although this is not at first obvious), and we managed to pull it all off. Home for us now is a company tent in the campground at the Skaftafell National Park at the southern end of the Vatnajokull ice cap. The guiding base is a large family camping tent with two rooms and a porch. This is the reception, office, gear store, staff room and kitchen for the whole operation. Currently there are two other guides working with us. There is free (but poor quality) wire less at the park HQ cafe, so feel free to email us. It’s not good enough for skype though. The glaciers and mountains here are amazing. The Mts are smaller than back in NZ but the glaciers come right own onto the farm land. I imagine that this is what Wales or the Mackenzie Basin looked like during the last ice age. I’ll post some photos when I work out how to do that. The guiding is very laid back. I’ll tell more once we have done a bit more work. But for those in the game, I did two half days yesterday, spent two hours on the ice on each, cut five steps total!
Bye! Ben.
We are now happily ensconced in our new home for the next two months. Two days before we flew out from the UK we received an email from Icelandic Mountain Guides to say that they were busy and wanted us to start work as soon as we got to Iceland. So much for our planned settling in over a few days. We were meet in Reykjavik (the capital) at one in the morning and taken back to the managers flat to kip on the floor for a few hours. Then at seven am we were up and off to the bus station and on to the bus to the glacier. About half way there, after three hours we were dropped off in the middle of a rural high way in the rain with instructions to find a farm house and rent a 17 seat bus off the farmer and continue on our way. I had visions of this all turning into a total epic but the Icelandic people and very helpful and friendly (although this is not at first obvious), and we managed to pull it all off. Home for us now is a company tent in the campground at the Skaftafell National Park at the southern end of the Vatnajokull ice cap. The guiding base is a large family camping tent with two rooms and a porch. This is the reception, office, gear store, staff room and kitchen for the whole operation. Currently there are two other guides working with us. There is free (but poor quality) wire less at the park HQ cafe, so feel free to email us. It’s not good enough for skype though. The glaciers and mountains here are amazing. The Mts are smaller than back in NZ but the glaciers come right own onto the farm land. I imagine that this is what Wales or the Mackenzie Basin looked like during the last ice age. I’ll post some photos when I work out how to do that. The guiding is very laid back. I’ll tell more once we have done a bit more work. But for those in the game, I did two half days yesterday, spent two hours on the ice on each, cut five steps total!
Bye! Ben.
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