The Blue Lagoon by day and Aurora Borealis by night

Our Day 2 in Iceland consisted of a day trip to the Blue Lagoon (we thought that we needed a break after our icy waterfall adventures and a long night of birthday celebrations :), and a night trip into the Icelandic wilderness to see the spectacular northern lights!

THE BLUE LAGOON


Those of you who watch The Bachelorette have probably already recognized this name, as this is the same place where Ally took her slew of boyfriends for some romantic time :) 


The Blue Lagoon is a hot springs area located, well, pretty much in the middle of a lava field. It got formed thanks to a crack in the earth's crust through which hot water gets pumped up from the underneath. The water is packed with minerals and algae and is very good for you. They also have mud and salts that do miracles for your skin. I couldn't resist getting a salt scrub, which is a pretty cool pampering experience, as they exfoliate your skin while floating you in the water. It's a spectacular place that looks like a giant milky blue steaming bath with an occasional geyser  here and there.

 Arriving!

The view

Colour of the water

Geyser where the hot water comes from

Swimming around...

 ...followed by lounging around :)

AURORA BOREALIS


Our relaxing day called for a night time adventure, so we took the tour into the wilderness for a chance to see the northern lights, which we did! We quickly learned that we actually got quite lucky. Aurora Borealis requires a clear day to be seen, and even still, it's not guaranteed. The phenomenon is caused by magnetic particles from the sun eruptions entering the earth's atmosphere and interacting with it, however, the eruptions happen in cycles of 11 years, peaking in the years 5 and 6 of the cycle, and this year we are still at the beginning of a new cycle which will peak in 2014. In the last 2 years northern light activity has been minimal, and just began to come back this year, which is what we witnessed! I guess you can say that all the lucky stars have aligned for us on this day :)


I admit that the northern lights have been on my bucket list for a while, and I can proudly check them off now! :) It's a fascinating thing to see - the lights cover a large portion of the sky usually in a ribbon or a swirl shape, and change shapes really quickly. What's even cooler is that your naked eye sees it as white, but the camera captures it as bright emerald green. 


We had 6 cameras with us, only 2 of which have been able to capture the lights. It's not an easy task without a fancy digital SLR of some kind. I'd like to give a special honorary mention to Anna's and Vi's cameras and Bela's photography training hehe.