Guest Post: Trip to Iceland by Andrea Canidio

Hi! I am Andrea, Sophie Lacombe's boyfriend who is currently a student at IMD. I live between Bruxelles and Budapest and commute to Lausanne regularly
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Sophie said: "I don't have time to take care of our vacations, so you do it. I just want to be outdoor. I have been locked in the IMD dungeon for 6 months. I want to hike, to be active, to be outside.' So I went online and bought two tickets to Iceland.

Iceland is an island sitting between Europe and the American continent, touching the Arctic circle with its Northern shore. From a geological point of view, it is one of the youngest places in the world. It is located with the American plates meet the Eurasian plate and for this reason, it is full of active volcanoes, natural hot springs, geysers, mountains, glaciers. It is roughly twice the size of Switzerland, but has only 300,000 inhabitants, about 70% of which live in the capital. This means that is has some of the most amazing landscapes and scenery in the world (with the exception of some spots) which you can admire in full solitude. I've always wanted to go there and this was my chance. Sophie didn't specify that she wanted to be in a warm place!

 

The vacation was great. We hiked through the valleys fuming from the presence of hundreds of hot pools; we climed a glacier, and a volcano; we saw icebergs, seals, puffins. We rented a 4x4 pick-up truck and drove for days on uneven roads, crossing several rivers, in a surreal landscape with no trees (the winds and temperature prevent them from growing), no buildings and no people. All we could see were patches of pure colours; the black of the lava stone, the bright green of the moss, the white of the glaciers, the red and yellow of the sulfur.





The vacation was also a reminder of how powerful and extreme nature can be. The temperatures would usually be between 5 and 15 degrees, the winds were extremely strong, the weather would abruptly change every 10 minutes. The whole country is accustomed to extreme climate and extreme events. For instance, several of the glaciers sit on top of active volcanoes and sometimes some of these volcanoes heat up- without erupting- and melt some of the ice. The water eventually bursts out and violently flood the surrounding valleys. This happened when we were there: a bridge was washed away and the only paved road connecting the capital with the other coastal cities had to be closed down. However, within two weeks a temporary bridge was in place and traffic was restored to normal. Apparently, this events are so frequent that Icelandic people are very efficient in reconstruction of roads and bridges.

Finally, here is a link to all the pictures of the vacation.