August 10 – Rafting!

Today we headed back to Reykjavik with a few stops along the way. First up was a trip to a greenhouse. Because of the short growing season, things like flowers and vegetables are just not practical crops. However, the presence of cheap electricity and hot water make greenhouses a reasonable investment. The one we stopped at specialized in flowers for the Icelandic market. They grow 15 kinds of flowers in several different enclosures. Each flower type has its own requirements for warmth, humidity, and fertilizer, which is all computer controlled.

Our host, showing off his greenhouse of Gerbera daisies

White roses in the process of being dyed blue to meet a customer request. This is an hour or two into the process. The cut stems sit in dye and by shipping time in a few more hours, they will be all blue.

Then we got to the main event for the day – a rafting trip down the glacial river, downstream from Gullfoss, which we visited a couple days ago. We dressed in wetsuits with booties, splashshirts, helmets, and life jackets. A 15 minute ride in an old US school bus over questionable roads took us to the starting point where we were instructed how to paddle. Once we got started, it was apparently that Jim and I were among the few who had ever put paddle to water before this, but people improved and we all had fun. The water was seriously cold!  Fortunately, it was also pretty deep so the rapids were not challenging, though we had a few opportunities to verify the water temperature. Our bus driver and one of the group who decided not to get wet were escorted by the raft bus driver to several spots along the route and they took pictures of us from the shore. Only one person had a waterproof frame for his camera, so you will have to wait for someone else to publish their photos to see what we all looked like. We stopped along the way to jump off a perfectly good cliff into the water – Jim and two other plus our guide tried it, plus EVERYONE in the other two boats (not our group and about half the age that we were). Some of those folks jumped twice – once from the 12 foot location and then the 15 foot. Later on, we asked the accompanying kayaker (safety crew) to do a roll, which he obliged us with.

The totally funniest part of the trip was when we had an opportunity to jump in the river and swim a bit. We had been given instructions on how to retrieve a man overboard, so Jim and several others decided to give it a try. The problems came when I tried to bring Jim back on board. He backed up to the raft, I held onto the shoulder straps of his life jacket, pushed DOWN (to generate buoyancy), and then lifted him up and (theoretically) in. I tried twice on my own, to no avail, so Joe and someone else volunteered to help. They got him up further, but he got stuck with his feet in the water and head in the boat with his back arched over the side. He had his life jacket on so loosely that it had half pulled off and was covering his face. I did not have the best view, but one of the women said she was laughing too hysterically to be of any use. He really looked like a beached whale (a very sweet, lovable whale…).

As we were driving away from the rafting trip, we encountered this horse on the road -- he apparently jumped his fence and was having a grand old time running along the road.

Once we were dry, we went to lunch and drove toward Reykjavik with a stop at a geothermal electricity and hot water plant owned by the city. There is so much geothermal potential in Iceland, that they are currently selling 75% to 85% of their production to the aluminum smelters, and are talking about doing more and laying cables to Scotland through the Faroe Islands to expand the market. Cheap energy is one of the things that allows the country to provide the social services it does and no one is too worried about how much electricity or hot water they use because it is so cheap. According to the plant representative, only 17 people were needed to run the place. He also said that internationally, only 2% of the geothermal potential is being used and Iceland is only using 18% of their potential. One of the obstacles is the location of plants, which Icelanders want to keep out of their wild areas. Icelanders drill down through the planet’s crust over 9000 feet and are targeting going down 3 miles in the future.