‘The land of Fire and Ice’ - Geography trip to Iceland, 2017

Mr. Sweeny, Trip Leader to Iceland
April 17, 2017

In the early morning hours of Thursday 30th March, 46 students and 5 staff members set off from Cornelius Vermuyden School on a once in a lifetime trip to the land of ‘Fire and Ice’, also known as ‘Iceland’.

On arrival at Keflavik airport, we met our wonderful tour guide Hulda who was with us for much of our trip around the country. Our first adventure took us to the famous geothermal spa, ‘Blue Lagoon’. The students were able to indulge in a unique experience of bathing in water heated from a local geothermal energy plant while smearing their faces with silica creams and lava-based facemasks. Many students announced on departure that they were definitely returning here.

On our first full day in Iceland, we embarked on the ‘Golden Circle tour’. Our first stop was at the earthquake exhibition in Hveragerdi which presented the causes and huge impacts caused here by the earthquake in 2008. The exhibition showed the experience of the residents, how the earthquake affected the buildings and local environments and other damage caused. Television screens showed the recordings from surveillance cameras, photographs taken by the locals and information from The Earthquake Engineering Research Centre. At the exhibition, students experienced a powerful earthquake at 6.6 in an earthquake simulator. Some of the screams were quite deafening to say the least!

We then visited one of Iceland’s most beautiful waterfalls, Gullfoss (Golden Falls) as well as the Geysir Geothermal Area teeming with hot springs, exploding geysirs and bubbling pools of mud. Although Geysir is less active these days, Strokkur spouted water high into the air every few minutes. We observed this spectacle many times, some students even being caught up in the moment and getting drenched as the water quickly fell back to earth. Something I’m sure they won’t forget too quickly.

We finished our day walking through Pingvellir national park where we saw the rift caused by the division of two tectonic plates. Iceland is the only place that the North Atlantic ridge is not submerged by the Atlantic Ocean.

The following day was every bit as action packed. We drove from Reykjavik over the mountain pass, Hellisheidi which offered magnificent views of the wide plains formed by glacial rivers, now fertile farmland in South-Iceland. We had frequent views of mountains, including snow-shrouded Hekla, the country’s most active volcano and the towering, ice capped stratovolcano, Eyjafjallajokull which erupted in 2010 and caused the huge disruptions to air traffic around the world. We stopped at the spectacular waterfalls, Seljalandsfoss and Skogafoss. The former provided students and staff with a fantastic opportunity to walk right behind the waterfall itself, the only waterfall in the world where you can do this. This created great excitement and allowed students to capture some breath-taking photos.

Later on in the day, we drove down to the south coast where we saw various landforms of coastal erosion such as sea stacks that reached a height of 66 metres. While strolling along this beach, we discovered fascinating basalt formed columns protruding from the black volcanic sand and a jagged shaped cave carved out from the powerful erosive sea.

Our final stop took us to the foot of Eyjafjallajokull Volcano. We watched a short twenty-minute documentary about a local farm, how the farmers became self-efficient over the years, and more recently, the battle they encountered from engulfing ash and the melting glacier from the 2010 eruption. It was amazing to learn about their story of resilience and courage to battle through an unimaginable fight and to still come out stronger on the other side.

Over the five days that we stayed in Iceland’s geographical haven, students saw geography come to life and were all immersed into it. A truly amazing and breath taking experience that staff and students will remember for years to come. Thank you to Miss. Goodwin, Miss. Thomas, Miss. Hall and Mr. Roche for embarking on this trip with me and ensuring this trip was a huge success. With excellent student behaviour, great weather and many laughs along the way, Iceland 2017 will certainly be remembered.