shhs magazine - South Hampstead High School

SHHS Interiors:Layout 1 12/06/2011 22:04 Page 30geographyAna H at ÞingvellírEach year the geographers head off toIceland. Here students from the trip in2010 remember the adventure.It was our first night, and a fantastic introduction toIceland. As we all walked towards the centre ofReykjavík, bundled up in millions of layers, we spottedthis misty streak through the sky which lookedoddly like the Northern Lights. Could it be? Oh yesit could. The Northern Lights had graced our eyesand forgetting the cold we started jumping in thefreezing air as we grabbed for our cameras. After afew minutes of pure excitement, we just stared upat the sky as for many of us, this was the first timewe’d seen the Northern Lights and we didn’t wantto miss a single second of it. Later that night wewent on a Northern Lights tour, which didn’t turnout to be the most successful venture, as by thenthe Northern Lights had faded, but we still managedto do some good old fashioned star spotting. Notthe worst way to spend your first night in Iceland.Our first stop was Þingvellír, many people’sfavourite place in Iceland, especially for those whodo Geography. It is one of the few places in the30world where you can walk between two tectonicplates, in this case the Eurasian and NorthAmerican plate. Reassuringly, these two plates onlymove 1 or 2 centimetres a year and are movingaway from each other. It really made the geographyseem real (an overused cliché but in this case completelytrue). It was one of the best photo-takingopportunities of the whole trip with the sun gleamingagainst the beautifully coloured rock of theplates. It was also the first time on our trip that wesaw Icelandic trees: it’s not for nothing that they’recalled dwarf trees.A definite highlight of our trip was seeingAnna G and Emma A at Þingvellírthe geysers at Strokkur. It is impossible to imagineso many incredible sights in one area. After watchingone geyser erupt in amazement you could goand see another a few metres away, just to makesure you captured it on camera.On the itinerary, the ‘secret waterfall’ atSeljalandsfoss had intrigued us all, but when wearrived it seemed totally visible and we were allslightly confused. Then as we walked behind it(which was amazing enough itself), Mr Harris led us