Reykjavik - Day 3 - Chasing the Lights

After ending our walking tour, a quick nap and that delicious Indian Dinner, it was time to “Chase the Northern Lights”. The operative word here is “Chase”. The lights don’t show all the time, they don’t show all over and they can be very shy. You generally have to be well away from the city or any other lights for them to be viewable by the naked eye.

We started this journey at 8:30 at night, getting picked up by our apartment and then heading north into the darkness. Since the lights are not always viewable by the naked eye, the guide will take a camera outside and see if he can see the lights through the camera. If they can, then you stay around in hopes that they become brighter and your eyes adjust so you can see them without the camera.

The night was pretty clear, so when a thin line of what seemed to be clouds appeared on the horizon, the guide got very excited (he was a very energetic person) and off we went to see if we had found the lights. We had, but you could only see them via camera shots. We waited around for an hour or so for them to become more visible, but they got shy and went away. The group had hot Chocolate (delish) and some sort of doughnut that grandmothers would give you when you came to visit, based on the taste of what we were given, grandma would be very lonely.

We then traveled further north to the Fjord to see if they would visit us there. Unfortunately, not, but we got a great nighttime shot of the Fjord (silver lining so to speak).

When you look at the pictures, the green strip you see are the Northern Lights. It was a very clear night, so we got some shots of the moon and stars along with the lights. Although some of the photos look like daytime shots, most were taken after 10PM. Sheri has a good camera and the new iPhones take some amazing pictures.

The whole scene sort of reminded me of the movie Twister with Helen Hunt and Bill Pullman as tornado chasers. They kept calling other chasers to see where the tornados were. In our version (a lot safer) the guides called each other throughout the area to see if they were seeing the lights. If they were, then I suppose everyone would converge onto that area, but everyone was having the same experience on this night.

We ended the chase around 1AM and headed back. On Wednesday night, Sheri will try again. As for me, I’m just going to relax and have a cocktail and wait for the pictures.Read more