Five Seven One

A striking characteristic to our recent trip to New Caledonia is my lack of reflection. The ease and health of the place and people has a surface beauty that may not be so superficial. It’s really hard to tell in a 10 day visit, but everything about the island lent to an immediate state of well being. Dealing with a lack of adversity has never sat well with me psychologically, but in this instance it seemed very natural. Maybe I am just getting old or maybe we were in the presence of a better way of life.

Traveling in Spain for me was like a second coming of age. Barcelona embodies all the confusion, passion, spontaneity, creativity and uncertainty that make the pubescent mind so wonderful and frightening. It is a combination of dissipation and focus with a lack of experience to distinguish the two, which gives its diverse residents youth and optimism.

Iceland earns its handle, “the land of fire and ice”, nowhere better than Vatnajökull Glacier. Every inch of landscape on this stretch of Iceland’s southern coast shows signs of millions of years of abuse and upheaval. The glacier seems to be sitting quietly, revealing itself through the massive fissures it has created in the volcanic mountains. Vast fields of black sand, caused by volcanoes erupting underneath the glacier are a reminder of floods rivaling the flow of the Amazon that have laid waste to lichen covered plains. Around the base of the glacier large inland lakes form floating icebergs thousands of years old.

Egilsstaðir is located on Iceland’s east coast. The town and the surrounding area are home to some of Iceland’s most beautiful landscapes. The town was established in 1947 as a service center for the region. It has grown a great deal over the years and is now the largest city on the east end of the island.