Page 31 - 2000 ICELAND

After our wonderful lunch, we climbed the crater walls with one of the
French girls, Cecile, a 23-year-old university student with very good English

skills. She was most anxious to learn American slang and for the rest of the
trip she and Kay took great pleasure in sharing expressions like, “get it off

your chest,” “egg on your face,” “hold your horses,” “right on the nose,” and
many more. Cecile was delightful; she and her younger cousin, Nicolas,

were traveling with his mother. Nicolas was interested in a geology career

and was the one who suggested a hiking trip to Iceland. He ran around
checking out rocks the whole trip and seemed totally elated with all his

finds. These two young people were further catalysts to our friendships
with the French.

When we reached the top of the crater walls, by very steep climbing among

rocks on no established trail, we looked out and viewed the extreme
emptiness of the surrounding countryside. There was virtually nothing on

the horizon in this isolated place and the crater was definitely the most

distinctive feature for miles and miles around.

GEOTHERMAL ENERGY

A further drive in the bus brought us to a geothermal electrical generating
plant, built up on a volcanic hillside with a crater adjacent to it. It was

rather space-age looking but the Icelanders have been using their
geothermic energy for many years. In this particular plant, holes were

bored down into the earth 2-3 kilometers to reach the steam coming off
the hot magma that close to the surface. The steam is then run through

piping into the turbines that produce the electricity (about 60 megawatts at

this plant). Safety valve chimneys continuously blast with ferocious noise
and clouds of steam rising high into the air. All around this plant are

smoking crevices, fumaroles, bubbling mud pots. It is rather eerie to be
walking around in this real hot spot.

As a way of illustrating how cheap electricity is in Iceland, Oskar told us that

an Australian aluminum factory was moved here even though the materials