Adobe Iceland Adventure: Practical Lesson #5

Fosshotel Nesbud: Sometimes pushing the journey beyond the next bend in the road is what makes all the difference. At least that is what happened today. It's Thursday in Iceland and the morning threatened rain. Much of the team opted to stay indoors, working on their prints and images for Friday night's slide show. Before the storm hit, Bill Atkinson and I started out for an unnamed but highly recommended hot spring hidden deep in a nearby mountain. We were given simple directions by the hotel cook, "Turn right, then right, then right, you'll come to a parking lot. Then walk 1 hour into the mountain." Uh, ok...

Unbelievably, 45 minutes later, we made it to the parking lot and started walking. Bill wisely left his Hasselblad with a Phase One P 45 back behind and brought his Canon Powershot SD400 instead. I carried my Nikon D200 but seeing the mountain in front of us I opted for only one lens, my Nikkor 18-200 VR.

There was plenty to talk about and our hike quickly took us deep into the mountains. It was cloudy and windy but otherwise the weather was fine. I was thrilled listening to Bill talk about his early years with Apple. He was employee # 51, but came to Apple when there were only 30 people. He's the genius behind MacPaint and HyperCard and part of the Macintosh development team. Now he lives and breathes photography and he's providing invaluable help and advice to our team.

An hour into our hike we came to bubbling hot springs, and assumed we had reached our destination. Bill stuck his hand into one and quickly realized that we'd die a horrible death if we bathed here. Seeing nothing else but cooking cauldrons all around us we almost gave in and headed back. Maybe the cook at the hotel thought we asked for someplace to "cook", not "bathe". Anyway, up ahead we could see a bend in the path and even though we couldn't see what was on the other side, we decided to push on.

To say we stumbled on paradise is not much of an overstatement. Just past the bend a small stream flowed through the ravine. And in this stream, in a small pond created by a small man-made rock dam, languished a group of bathers. They were enjoying a mix of ice-cold mountain water blended with scorching hot water which entering the stream from a nearby fissure.

We hung out for a long time and then headed back down the mountain. We learned, or maybe we were just reminded, that pushing beyond the obvious is often what makes all the difference.