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Iceland’s Blue Lagoon

Blue Lagoon, Iceland

The Blue Lagoon. Photo by Katie Botkin.

A Letter from Katie Botkin in Iceland:

I have eight hours to spend in Iceland, on a layover. I already know what I’m going to do: I’m going to buy a ticket that will take me from the airport to the Blue Lagoon spa and hot springs 20 minutes away, spend a couple of hours there, and then head back. I procure the ticket, head outside, and have to dig out my coat, such is the chill of the Iceland summertime.

The landscape is wild, mostly volcanic rock draped over with a bit of moss, and I wish as we make our way to the hot springs that I was staying a bit longer. The bus driver stops, we put our hand luggage in storage, and troop in to the lagoon, where we’re handed a bracelet that will allow us to program our lockers and purchase beer at the waterside bar. I change and go outside, to be met with a flat expanse of steaming pastel blue — silica, potassium, calcium, magnesium and various algae all mixed in with geothermal seawater.

It’s raining lightly, and the patrons wade around, smearing themselves with white silica mud from specially-provided buckets. It’s supposed to be good for your skin. I’m freezing in my bikini, so I hop in and find the warmest spot in the series of pools, next to what appears to be a bubbling geyser coming straight out of porous lava rock. The floor of the pools are uneven, but have been coated with silica deposits, which makes them smooth and hard and white, at least where they’re not matted down with loose stuff. I float on my back for awhile and try out the sauna.

After I shower and dry off, I realize that my hair is still full of silica. Actually, this is a bonus, because it gives it some volume. I’m pretty sure the best hair days of my life were spent in New Zealand’s geothermal regions, when the shower water was similarly endowed with silica, and my normally flat locks bloomed with minerals. I have some health food, since I’m in that sort of mood, and not long afterwards get on the airplane sleepy and relaxed.

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