Traveling Applejax

♫ Now’s your moment, floating in a blue lagoon. Boy, you better do it soon; no time will be better. She don’t say a word, and she won’t say a word until you kiss the girl. ♫

Ha! I’ve had the “Kiss the Girl” song from The Little Mermaid (my favorite movie as a kid) stuck in my head for the past day. Yesterday Mike and I biked from our campsite to Iceland’s famous Blue Lagoon, or Bláa Lónið in Icelandic.

The Blue Lagoon is Iceland’s most popular tourist attraction. It features baby blue hot pools amongst black volcanic rocks. The pools are actually the byproduct of one of Iceland’s largest geothermal power plants, but they’re purported to have healing powers. The mineral content and high levels of silica in particular are supposed to be good for the skin. In fact, there are little stations around the pool where guests are encouraged to plaster silica mud all over their faces.

Though we’ve read much in blogs about how one has to strip down completely and shower in front of spa employees at public bathing institutions, both Mike and I found the lockers, changing rooms, and showers to be very clean and not at all as traumatizing as the blogs implied. Oddly enough, one of the coolest things at the Blue Lagoon was its locker system. When you check in, the employees give you a wrist band with an electronic chip in it. You can use this chip to open and close any locker you choose to use during your stay (but obviously it won’t open anyone else’s). It’s a tricksy system to describe, but it was really quite clever. If you spent more for additional spa privileges, your bracelet would also open doors to exclusive areas.

Anyway, once we bypassed the locker rooms, we were ready for the main attraction: the Blue Lagoon itself! Of course, we had to hurry through the 50-degree air temperature outside to get to the pool. Once in the water, however, only my head and ears were cold. The pool temps vary between 98 and 102 degrees. The Blue Lagoon is really just one giant pool of depths varying from ankle-deep to shoulder-deep. As I already mentioned, it has silica face mask stations, but it also has an in-pool bar, a cave with benches, a hot waterfall, a massage area (for which you must pay extra), and many nooks and crannies to explore. We spent a few wonderfully relaxing hours in the water and became quite prune-y as a result.

When we’d had our fill, we went to the observation deck for some photos and then began our ride back. I neglected to mention above that it began raining while we were in the pools because a little rain on your head when the rest of your body is a toasty 100-degrees is not so bad. We bundled up for our ride back to our campsite, but the rain isn’t as negligible when you’re not in a hot tub. Actually, it wouldn’t have been so bad if it weren’t blowing in our faces at 25mph. We struggled a bit with our ride back, especially when we crested a hill and got a full-force crosswind.

After dinner we retreated to our tent, which was also being pummeled by the winds. I’m quite glad Mike insisted we get a better tent for this trip, but I was still worried. The winds were so strong! I didn’t sleep well for fear of our tent collapsing on us in the night. I kept imagining myself trying to hold down all of our bags and our maimed tent in the pouring rain and raging wind. Luckily, this did not happen, and I think I fell asleep after 2:00 sometime. We awoke to more rain, but calmer winds.

This is another tent at our campsite. The owners literally anchored their tent, the winds were so bad. Our tent is a little nicer, so we didn’t use an anchor, but I think we used about 20 stakes.

The weather looks better for today and tomorrow at least, so we’ll hit the road again soon. Our hours are totally messed up but very flexible here since it really never gets dark. We go when the weather is best and we feel like going. In other words, it’s time for me to sign off for today!