Day 7 - Chasing the Northern Lights

So before we set out to Iceland I checked the weather forecasts. Current forecasts and historical trends show the temperature tends to keep around 0. That to me does not seem terribly cold so I prepared for the worst but expected the best. Apparently I did not account for the brutal windchill. It is always windy here. So while the temp was 0, it felt more like -15 to -20. Good thing I came prepared.

After our morning at the Blue Lagoon we went back to the hotel, had a much needed nap (the hot water drains alllll the energy from you) then got cleaned up for a nice dinner at the Sky bar on top of our hotel with beautiful vistas of the city.

After 9pm we went to meet our Northern Lights excursion team. They picked us up in a Mercedes 4x4 all-terrain SUV type vehicle and we headed out of the city about 45 min away.

The conditions for seeing the lights are pretty precise. Everything needs to line up, with a healthy dose of luck. These guys knew some typically good spots, and we were very lucky to be treated to a showing soon after we arrived. The lights in the sky are faint to the naked eye, and don’t look nearly as brilliant as they do on film. Still, it was amazing and glad we got to experience it despite the mindnumbing cold.