Our trip to Iceland contained a small stop off in the UK. We had expected to tour a quaint little English village but ended up playing with old toys in a museum, setting off an alarm because someone tried to cheat on a game and making a quick escape to play pool, a true taste of the English experience, I guess.

After countless hours of travelling we finally arrived in Iceland all ready and raring to go . . . go straight to bed that is. For a country called Iceland we were a little shocked in the morning on our tour to see that there was in fact no ice to be seen, but were promised we would see some soon. On our walk round Reykjavik where we went off to explore, without the teachers, we decided it wasn’t even cold enough for ice, oh how wrong we were. In our exploration we found signs for whale watching and decided it was a great idea. I think I can safely say, after living in rainy England for many winters, I’ve never been as cold as we were on that boat, after about three whale appearances we retreated to the lower indoor deck to indulge in chocolate in as many forms as you can think of.

We went on many exciting excursions around the island, one of which included a truly unique experience in the blue lagoon, also known as the 'geothermal bath'. As well as bathing in the lava caves, we also had the chance to cover ourselves with the lagoons natural silica white mud, renowned for its skin cleansing qualities, one part of trip where Lauren came in useful . . . tips on pampering!

Despite the fun we had we mustn’t loose sight of the fact we went for a Geography trip, and we did actually see some amazing geographical sites. After a hard year's learning about waterfalls, volcanoes, glaciers and beaches we finally had the chance to see some of the best examples of these in the world.

We visited two waterfalls during our trip to Iceland and I think I speak for all when I say they were amazing to watch, but, being the inquisitive EIC students we are, we couldn’t settle for this and decided that we would once again disappear on an adventure, lead by our seemingly fearless but really just insane leader Anthon, round the back and inside the waterfall, a wet experience to say the least.

Next we set off for a volcano where Anthon, this time joined by Etienne, decided that they would go down and, within the space of thirty seconds, they were down inside the crater of the volcano. Again this seemed a good idea, so off we set treading carefully down when our resident balance queen let out a yelp and decided to roll the rest off the way down bouncing from rock to rock as she went, but its not as bad as it sounds as we had a resident Romeo on the scene and Jimmy set off full sprint to Lauren’s rescue. Romantic in a sense I think. Meanwhile the rest off us were entertained by Alice and her antics.

The way the trip was going, the excursions were getting more eventful and funnier by the day and we weren’t going to break tradition. We set off to a glacier, one of the earth's most silent but deadly forces. Unsurprisingly that didn’t phase either of our two test dummies, so we sent Etienne and Anthon to check its safety. After a few minutes watching them wandering round we came to the conclusion it was fine and off we went, apparently it wasn’t as easy as they boys made it look, as Anisa was quick to discover, she ended up on the floor for most of the time. We decided to leave the glacier and move on, so off we went, all except one. I managed to find the only piece of dry land that wasn’t dry land at all, but a two foot puddle with a crust on top, I proceeded to sink and gave a whole new meaning to the term stick in the mud, after being rescued by Jimmy (again) with a bit of brute force and ignorance, off we went.

We finished off our geographical site seeing with two trips, first we went to a beach, now we have these in Spain so no big deal I hear you say, but this beach was a little different. The sand was black. Not only this but, once again, our two intrepid explorers found something to put them in peril, they decided to climb the columnar basalt, or hexagonal sticks of rock. This must have been a great idea because even David, who gathered a bit of a reputation for being able to sleep twenty five hours a day decided to go for a climb, and fortunately for him remained awake all the way up and down.

On our last day we set off to a shopping centre for a taste of Icelandic shopping, all good fun, then back to the “Hard Rock Café” for our final dinner. As we waited to be served Miss Fitzsimmons, Mr Morris and Miss Katya managed to grab all of our attention, (and the rest of the restaurant's) to give us our awards for the week. They had carefully planned apt awards for all of us ranging from; Anisa the peace maker, Lauren the smiler, James the “gangsta” rapper, Jimmy a.k.a. Romeo’s hero award, Alice’s most embarrassing moment, David the sleeper and finally our two adventurers, Etienne the mountain goat and Anthon “007” Miers.

I think I can safely say that a thoroughly good trip was had by all, and given the chance we would all go again. So, on behalf of the group, I’d like to say a big thank you to the teachers who accompanied us and gave us the chance to see some amazing things and the rest of the group who made the trip what it was.

! STOP PRESS !
Just thought I’d let you know that on the 5/11/2004 the glacier we are pictured upon had a volcano erupt under it and is now gone….. So we were some of the last to see it in its full glory, another achievement for the EIC wall maybe?

James Lavelle - Year 11