enter a cavern Ice is much more pleasant after donning a good waterproof coat and snow boots. We filed down, admiring the way the beams of light sparkled off unearthly greens and grays on uneven walls. There was no way to capture the majesty of this frozen abyss on camera, so I put my phone away and concentrated on taking all that beauty with me.
With its area of approximately 925 square kilometres, Langjökull is the second largest glacier from Iceland. This disappearing at an alarming speed, almost ten kilometers a year , so crossing the caves excavated inside means wading through ankle-deep puddles. a constant melting rain. When we finally emerged from the depths, I was shivering, with all our clothes soaked and emotion on the surface. It was the sixth time I had been to Iceland, but the first time I had entered a glacier. What a way to get back on the adventure.
Northeast Iceland beach
Viking Cruises ship off the Icelandic coast
The tour of the caves was part of one of the organized excursions of the new Viking Cruises itinerary that circles the island. For eight days, the cruise skirts the coast, heading northwest from Reykjavik and stopping at small ports and more remote places, such as the spectacular area of Los western fjords . Cruising hadn't been back for long, and this one had a good battery of prevention measures : It was only open to vaccinated people, it had a mandatory mask policy, it had a very efficient contact tracing system and it carried out daily PCR.
The variety of this route is, without a doubt, one of its strengths. The excursion to the vivacious akureyri city , for example, includes a visit to the Lystigarðurinn Akureyrar , the northernmost botanical garden in the world , in which flowers of intense blue and pink tones grow. The route also passes through the art Museum , where is the work of erro , the Icelandic Pop Art painter.
Ísafjörður , one of the oldest fishing villages in Iceland and one of the first stops, is a totally different experience. Kayaking and hiking the green slopes of the peat fields of yesteryear was tempting, but I decided on the Dynjandi, the largest waterfall in the area . As I walked through the mist, over the ground carpeted with wild blueberries and under the flocks of arctic terns, I couldn't help thinking of calmer, freer times, before all the rush of vaccines, tests, distances with possible contagion vectors. When we arrive at the falls and its thunderous roar enveloped me, accompanied by fine drops of water, the pandemic seemed like a distant memory.
The reality check came at the next destination. Four days after starting the trip, during the visit to Seydisfjordur , a sleepy town of 665 people, our guide took the entire group back to the ship. There was an asymptomatic positive for COVID-19 among the passengers and, although it was properly isolated in a section of the huge cruise ship with capacity for 930 people and the tests to the rest of the ship revealed no more cases, the Icelandic coast guard expelled the Viking Sky from Seydisfjordur.
The Wintergarden area on a Viking Cruises ship
On the fifth day, we stopped at an even smaller village called Djúpivogur , where excursions by land, surprisingly, were able to continue. But when the group had not advanced four kilometers through the fields of beautiful purple flowers, the guide received an urgent message: the coast guard had ordered the ship to return to Reykjavík.
Although Viking Cruises did everything it could to protect its guests and the communities they visited, international cruises right now they have this inconvenience: in each place there are different people making different decisions, and results are very unpredictable . The majority of passengers understood that we are in a very uncertain time to travel and remained in good spirits, although some expressed their frustration at having seen their vacations interrupted by a stranger without symptoms.
I was as sad as anyone that the trip was cut in half, and had my moment to wonder if I hadn't been better off planning a trip on my own. But I also realized that, in the current circumstances, traveling independently can endanger communities in the area much more than a cruise ship with its security measures in order. If I hadn't been on the cruise, my interactions wouldn't have been recorded anywhere. If I had been infected with coronavirus without showing symptoms, I could have spread the disease without realizing it.
Aboard the Viking Sky, the security measures They guaranteed the monitoring of the route, the daily tests and the interruption of the trip at the slightest sign of contagion. This made me realize that, at least for now, a cruise is the best way to travel to take care of everyone.