El Norte con los del Sur

I'm still a week behind, but last weekend was pretty good and long (which explains this long post). Auðunn, one of the HR guys from Mannvit, and the other 3 MIT people came up to the north to visit some of the power plants and just to have fun. Helgi, another chemical engineer, also came up on Thursday to give us a tour of the Kalina power plant.

Helgi explaining what everything does.


Auðunn, Cash, and I discussing something intellectual.

So the crew picked me up at my work office on Thursday around midday and we went to go eat at Greifinn (the place where I had previously eaten kangaroo). We then drove to and toured the Kalina plant, even though it was not working at the time since the turbine was broken. It smelled like ammonia, but it was very chemical engineering-esque.
The church in Húsavík.

Afterwards, we went to the nearby town of Húsavík, the whale watching capital of Iceland. And yes, we did in fact go whale watching, even though it was cold and cloudy. We ended up seeing three humpback whales; Freddy, Snow White, and an unnamed whale. The ship also ran over Freddy once, and I happened to be at the front of the boat when it happened. After the whale watching, the people on board gave us hot chocolate and kleina (Icelandic donut).

Cynthia, Cash, me, Auðunn, and Jennifer embarking on the whale watching voyage.


The three whale watching ships.

The humpback.

When we hit Freddy. :(

Later we ate at a restaurant near the harbor and we tried smoked puffin and reindeer. The puffin was pretty good, and slightly fishy. The reindeer was very delicious and better than beef.

Puffin.

Reindeer.

OK, so is reindeer native to Iceland? No. Actually a long time ago (not sure when) the Icelanders imported reindeer from Norway and let them free all over Iceland. However, they only survived in the eastern part of Iceland, because the conditions elsewhere were simply not fit for the reindeer. There are no reindeer farms, so the deer meat (like mutton) is free range and devoid of chemicals.

After Húsavík, we went to the area surrounding Lake Mývatn and were on our way to the Krafla power plant, where we would spend the night. We did stop at the the boiling mud place that smells very sulphuric.


Cash looking at the bubbles. Me - burning/dancing with the bubbles.


This is the Krafla power plant, at night.


The nice little rooms we stayed in.

It was a very fun day, and we still had plenty more adventures coming up. I think I will leave the other days for future posts, so as to not bore you and also because it is quite late at the moment and I have work tomorrow (I start labwork tomorrow!! but I will go more into detail when I reach that part of my blog).

That's all for now.