Walking on the Moon

Iceland’s intensely alien landscapes await modern adventurers in search of elevated experiences

- By Jordan Riefe

It has an alien allure, the southern coast of Iceland. As you stand amid emerald fields tinted with wildflowers you wonder where the trees are? They were chopped down by Vikings 1,000 years ago. And where are the animals? Other than livestock there’s practically none. Empty acres of farm land, horizons as wide as the Mojave, but green not brown, and cold, not hot. It’s a place so desolate that Neil Armstrong trained here for his historic moonwalk. It’s where the sun stays up later than you, and boulders are inhabited by elves; not the cute Santa’s helper kind, but the Lord of the Rings warrior kind that steals your children and wreaks havoc. But strangest of all, it’s where they actually take the Eurovision Song Contest seriously.

And if all of this sounds a bit nuts, just remember the Justin Bieber plane wreck. You saw it in his 2015 “I’ll Show You” video. Now it’s a tourist attraction. And good for Iceland, since tourism has officially overtaken fishing as the country’s largest industry. But bad for Iceland, since Fjadrargljufur Canyon, also in the video, has been declared off-limits because of over visiting.

Go in style aboard your private jet to Keflavik Nas Airport, just outside of Reykjavik. From there, you can take in volcanic craters, glaciers, lava flows and sheep-studded valleys from above while you sip champagne with your nearest and dearest. It’s perfect for winter when access roads are as limited as daylight hours, but summer’s better when the days are twice as long and the temps are conducive to, say, ditching the jet and paragliding over stunning black-sand beaches courtesy of True Adventure Paragliding in the coastal town of Vik.