Wednesday
30th May 2001, 1230 BST
Rendezvous
in Reykjavik
by Steff Gaulter |
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Reykjavik
- the beer is really not that expensive, honest |
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Iceland
is an island with diverse and spectacular landscapes.
Its capital Reykjavik has recently become a trendy place to visit
but is very expensive. Now that some of the low-cost airlines offer
flights to the city it is relatively cheap to get there, but hotels
and rental cars are still very costly.
If you stray from the main road to Reykjavik, you will discover that
the roads are generally tracks over lava fields, so this would explain
the expense of hire cars!
The city comes alive at night, locals often setting out for the night
well after midnight. There are all sorts of horror stories about the
prices of drinks, but in the average pub a pint came to about £3,
so expensive, but not quite the £8 sometimes quoted.
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| Steff
in a hot spring, surrounded by geysers |
The island is part
of the Mid-Atlantic ridge, and therefore has a lot of volcanic activity.
Iceland utilises this the its full potential. About 90 per cent of
the electricity used on the island is generated from geothermal energy,
and that geothermal activity also provides some of Iceland’s most
stunning tourist attractions, including hot springs and geysers.
Considering how far north the country is, the average temperatures
are surprisingly mild.
Like the UK, it is in the path of the Gulf Stream, pumping relatively
warm water to its shores. This keeps the average temperature in January
around -5C, whereas parts of Northern Canada on the same latitude
have an average of a bitterly cold -25C.
However the Gulf Stream not only makes it relatively mild, but also
makes it wet and stormy. In winter there are often gales and thick
fog that does not lift all day, so the best time to visit Iceland
is during the summer.
The main obstacle in visiting at any other time is the number of daylight
hours.
In January it drops to just over four hours, and the little sun they
do see is low in the sky, hugging the horizon but in the summer there
is plenty of daylight.
Reykjavik itself does not quite experience 24-hour daylight, but it
is not far off in June and July with around 21 hours. |
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