ICELAND SAFARI : A winter trek from Reykjavik into the pristine central highlands gives new meaning to off-road adventure

On the day before our snow safari, Iceland was too warm. It had been drizzling all morning in Reykjavik, blurring all the mountains. The week before, the temperature had even reached 60 degrees, a winter feat that had made this country the warmest place in all of Europe for the day. This we heard from our pilot as the jet eased to a stop at Keflavik International Airport, and we were worried.

My husband and I had planned just a two-day trip to Iceland this past February, on our way to several more days of rest, merriment and Grieg concerts in Bergen, Norway. The main activity was to be something unusual, the snow safari I’d read about while first visiting Iceland the summer before. Perhaps we’d even take a dip in one of the volcanically heated outdoor swimming pools in Reykjavik--the ones shown in brochure photographs with steam whiskering up into the winter air. And we’d certainly think about seeing an Icelandic film in one of the city’s cinemas; strolling through Old Town and around downtown’s Lake Tjornin; surely eating some exquisite fish and lamb, savored with the Icelandic schnapps called “Black Death.”

My husband had been a bit dubious about snow safari-ing. I love winter more than he does. But after hearing from me, yet again, that Iceland is the most beautiful country on earth--a place whose spare landscape clears the mind but never leaves the memory--he’d agreed to our adventure.

As we settle into the clean, quiet Flybus that connects the airport to Reykjavik’s hotels, I squint out beyond the broad portico, into the rain. It has splashed the lava boulders dark, even nudged some green from the mosses. At least the mountains to the east are frosted generously with snow.

The woman behind the desk at our hotel, the Saga, smiles when I whine a little about the warmth. Not a usual complaint in a country that swims in the North Atlantic a bit southeast of Greenland, and enjoys an air-conditioned 50-70 degrees even in high summer. Are the glaciers getting too slushy and slippery on top? I ask. Perhaps we should call our safari tour operator? Blond hair swinging, Gudrun pulls the phone book out from under the reservation desk and dials Addi Hermannsson at Add Ice Travel. Currently the only operator offering snow safaris, he had come recommended by the Hotel Borg, where I stayed the previous summer.

Iceland’s phone directory is, by the way, organized according to people’s first names. You distinguish one Einar Jonsson, say, from four other Einar Jonssons by looking for Einar’s job in parentheses. This is why hotel desk people almost always offer to help with finding the right name.

Addi--call Icelanders by their first names or be considered rude--switches from an Icelandic “Godan daginn” (good day) to perfect English. He reminds me how changeable the weather is here. A storm could roll in off the ocean and dump a meter of snow by tomorrow morning’s safari departure time. Or we can change the route.

I assert myself. Of course a softening glacier is not safe--cracks could have formed large enough to trap a vehicle--but we definitely want to go into the central highlands. A lava-glacier-mountain plateau, all wilderness without roads, this black and white desert is the country’s heart and soul, comprising about 80% of Iceland. No one can live there--the population clings to the coast or very near to it--but we have heard about the high desert’s dramatic, simple beauty and know that Icelanders love to go there. Addi agrees that we’ll try. By 8:45 the next morning, there is no snow and it’s even warmer than the day before, about 40 degrees. The average here in winter hovers around 32, thanks to the Gulf Stream, that vast river of warm water hidden within the ocean that pumps heat in four seasons. Pulling on their parkas by the hotel door now is a group of seven Swedes, all middle-aged men, all winners of the snow safari, it turns out. Addi and his partner Thorsteinn Erlingsson push through the door, right on time. Addi is gray-bearded with the look of an adventurer, Thorsteinn blond and in his late 20’s. Addi addresses the Swedes in Swedish, Thorsteinn us in English: “Langjokull (long glacier) is too dangerous today but the highlands are fine.”

Outside the door are three of the strangest off-road vehicles I’ve ever seen. Giant tires--we hear later that these are tractor tires adapted and made even larger by Icelandic tour operators--make the trucks bounce softly in the wind. At 38 to 44 inches high, the tires are designed to slouch through deep snow and muddle through real rivers.

Communications antennae on the vehicle tops quiver in the wind, making the cars look like giant insects from the days of the dinosaurs. Actually, they are Ford Econoliners, Jeeps and Toyotas in disguise. They sport single side band systems (with a range of 300 miles), as well as regular mobile telephones, a very high frequency ground-to-air rescue system, and ordinary citizen band radios--all to link them to each other and back to Reykjavik in a kind of chrome chain. This is not only for safety should the vehicles become separated or lost, but part of the system enables Addi to talk to passengers in all three vehicles at once. He and Thorsteinn can converse in six languages each.

The snow vans seat four to 10 passengers and range in color from acid blue to a saturated green to glossy black. In the black one, it turns out, are three teen-agers, Icelandic friends, coming along for fun.

Addi takes the Swedes, Thorsteinn us, to simplify language issues, and we all clamber in. We immediately feel safe and comfortable inside these gentle monsters: Everything is thickly enclosed; the seats are soft and there’s plenty of leg room and heater capacity.

The antennae shudder at ignition but everything else is quiet and smooth. We’re off on city streets for now. I loosen my orange Thinsulate coat, the one I wear on the coldest Minnesota days. It’s almost hot in here.

In 20 minutes, Reykjavik has fallen into our rear-view mirrors and the Blue Mountains swell in the distance. Nestled in them is the country’s largest ski complex, 16 lifts. My husband, a good skier, listens wistfully as we hear that lift tickets are $10 a day.

At this stage of the trip, we are still traversing asphalt roads, and it’s smart to stay on them and out ot the crevasses. Iceland is an intensely volcanic country. Like Hawaii, it lies over a “hot spot” of liquid lava deep inside the planet. In addition, it sits astride the longest ocean bottom seam on earth, from which lava flows regularly. The lava has made Iceland--and the job is not done. The process leaves a lot of old cracks, many large enough to swallow an all-terrain vehicle.

This safari adventure is to include three stops, all on regular roads, before we enter the wilderness. And the first, less than an hour out of Reykjavik, is coming up: Hveragerdi, one of Iceland’s main greenhouse towns. About 200 people live here and many of them must be “indoor farmers,” who tend several glassed-in acres of tomatoes, cucumbers, green peppers, and more. The hothouse vegetables lend their colorful health to winter tables; precious fruit is grown, too. Inside the greenhouse are restrooms, a woolens store and a touristy snack bar, fortunately deserted this winter morning.

After the 10-minute stop, Thorsteinn is warmed by coffee and opening up. (Icelanders don’t seem to wear their hearts on their sleeves but are very friendly once they get to know you.) We swing back out onto the main road. A field away stands a little herd of Icelandic ponies, breathing white plumes into the frosty air, and each furrier than its companion. Their ancestors came to Iceland with the Vikings.

In about half an hour we reach our second stop, Kerid. Not a town, but an explosion crater. About 1,500 years ago, a volcanic blow-up made this hole in the ground--600 feet across and 300 feet deep. It filled with rainwater, saw its sides softened and greened by time, and now is very pretty. We walk to its edge and look.

The last stop before we leave all roads behind comes up about 15 minutes later: Gullfoss or golden falls. My husband is literally in awe as we disembark and walk closer. I feel tears coming to my eyes. It is that beautiful. Mist catches the pale silver winter light as a fierce meltwater river crashes out of the black and white wilderness into its unfathomable gorge. This is a natural Niagara. No buildings, no clutter, no signs, no litter.

Taking deep breaths, we climb back into our trusty vehicle. The Swedes and the teen-agers are waiting at road’s end to enter the wilderness with us. We lurch once, then scramble up the hilly Kjolur Track. Within five minutes, there is plenty of snow, perhaps six inches deep, soft, and without the track of any other vehicle or any living thing. It feels like a different planet, one without life where lava has made ridges, slopes, and flat desert. In the distance are the Kjolur Mountains.

Outside it is surely colder now, since we are continuing steadily uphill. But inside it is warm, and not bouncy enough to notice. Then, within 10 minutes of leaving Gullfoss, we founder in and then shudder out of a six-foot wide rut. It cuts into the track like a machete stroke. Now this is real snow safari stuff.

Forging ahead, Thorsteinn and Addi click on their communications. It’s time to inflate the tires with air pumps (powered by the car engine); this makes the vehicle bounce even better over the occasionally slush-saturated track.

Thorsteinn has begun telling us yet more about safety issues. Four-wheel-drive vehicles are necessary for the highlands, along with an experienced Icelandic guide. The international Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) system on the jeep’s dashboard is sending signals automatically to bounce off earth-orbiting satellites. With each bounce-back, the position of the vehicle is mapped to within five centimeters of ground. The monitor then shows our precise position on an electronic map, an advancing green line across the screen as we drive. This GPS system not only tells us exactly where we are but would allow our vehicle to retrace its path on the way back, even in a blizzard so white that we could not see our tracks.

We proceed past lava chunks, a few with white lichen patches, tossed around randomly as though by giants playing ball. The 3,000-foot-high mountains are closer to us now, and though they look like a ridge, they are not: Beyond them, the country’s central plateau is all about that height.The highlands march more than 200 miles to the north, white with ordinary snowfields--and with five glaciers that throw their paws across the desert and down the valleys. The largest glacier in all of Europe, the Vatnajokull, is about 80 miles to our east/southeast and shoves down from the highlands nearly to the sea.

My white reverie is ended by one of the few large jolts of the trip. We’re driving over a river about 10 feet wide--and there is no bridge. The glacial rivers of the highlands change their courses so often that building bridges over them would be futile. Then we lurch up the other bank.

As we trek higher, toward the Langjokull (long glacier)--at 40 miles long and 20 miles across the second largest in Europe--several more rivers throw down glittering black challenges. In one of them, the green vehicle gets stuck. After 10 minutes of front tires, then rear tires clawing at river banks, Thorsteinn tells us about the special gear box he and Addi have built to provide extra mechanical traction. It works, and the green monster roars out of the river.

The world is all white now, but the winter sun isn’t muscular enough to make glare. Suddenly, we enter a valley and come upon the only evidence of human hands in three hours: a small hut with a nearby outhouse, both nestled in a space made by seven mountains. A tiny sign reads “Hagavatn.” We step out into a silence bent only by the wind. Just over the ridge is Langjokull, and I think of John Muir’s description of a glacier as “white thunder.”

Thorsteinn and Addi unpack the box lunches they bring along: good thick bread; Icelandic herring and shrimp; a salad of greenhouse tomatoes; a milk box, and my favorite, skyr, a kind of Icelandic yogurt cheesecake (low-fat but it doesn’t taste that way). A Thermos of coffee and cups is unpacked too.

Everyone eats inside but me. I want to feel the white wind, even climb part way up toward the glacier that hides the mountain, then slide back down on my slippery Thinsulate coat.

Icelanders are very conservation minded, and we add our trash to Addi’s bag to take it out with us. Then Thorsteinn says, “Conditions can change fast here, and the Swedes have to get back. I suggest that we do too.” Downhill on the same track, we reach lower land in less than three hours, then soon take a different asphalt road.

The last stop is dessert and geysers. In the small Hotel Geysir dining room, five kinds of Icelandic cakes are spread out for us alongside hot coffee, all part of the tour. Outside, about two dozen geysers, large and small, crowd close together in this two-acre geyser field. Some burble up pewter water, others are crusted in earth mineral colors with green or blue or white “eyes,” and some put on a particularly dramatic show. One of these has a mouth of cerulean blue water that begins to quiver, then whooshes up suddenly like a giant fire hose just untwisted.

It is just an hour back to Reykjavik now, all on good roads. New snow is just dusting the city, and darkness has fallen over Mt. Esja and the Kerlingarfjoll Mountains. It has been an amazing trip in a magical country.

GUIDEBOOK: Operation Iceland

Getting there: Iceland Air flies round trip (12 hours) from Los Angeles to Reykjavik for about $840 midweek, $890 weekends, until March 15. Or take any American carrier to New York, Baltimore or Orlando, Fla., connecting on Iceland to Reykjavik.

Where to stay: Lodgings in Reykjavik include the Hotel Saga, a modern hotel with a stunning lobby in the University Quarter, close to city center (from the U.S., telephone 011-354-1-29900, fax 011-354- 1-623980); Hotel Borg, a landmark hotel in the heart of Old Town (tel. 011-354-1-11440, fax 011-354-1- 11420); Hotel Odinsve, a charming small Old Town hotel (tel. 011-354-1-25224, fax 011-354-1-29613); the Arnfjord Hotel Apartments, in excellent locations throughout the city (tel. 011-354-1-680000, fax 011-354-1-683000, and the Gestaheimilith, or Salvation Army guest house (tel. 011-354-1-613203, fax 011-354-1-613315). Winter prices (until May 1) for doubles run about $125-$175 nightly at the hotels, $140-$200 at the rental apartments (with a breakfast buffet at both), and about $30 a night, winter rates, at the guest house. (There is no tipping in Iceland.)

Where to eat: There are abundant, excellent restaurants in Reykjavik, which comes as a shock to many visitors. Try Cafe Opera (Laekjargata 2), Thrir Frakkar (Baldursgata 14), Grillid (in the Saga Hotel), Vidtjornina (Templarasund 3), or ask for a recommendation at your hotel. Food is expensive since much of it must be imported--and restaurant prices reflect that (typically around $60 for two without wine). But the Icelandic fish you choose will have come into the harbor, just iced, at about 4 p.m. that day, and is generally fresher than anything, for example, in New York restaurants. The free-range Icelandic lamb also is excellent.

Snow safaris: We made reservations with Add Ice Travel (Alftaland 17, 108 Reykjavik, Iceland; tel. 011-354-1-676755, fax 011-354-1-678954), and would go with this company anywhere, any season. By using free-lance drivers, they can marshal up to 20 vehicles, each seating 4-10 people, but they will go with as few as two. The one-day snow safari costs about $150 per person and runs 9 a.m.-8 p.m. It includes an excellent Scandinavian lunch and a huge snack of cakes and coffee. The two-day trip costs about $300 and includes a lunch, grilled-lamb dinner, breakfast and lunch the next day, along with lodgings at Landmannalaugar, deeper into the highlands; nice, clean huts have shared showers and electricity. A dip in the natural hot pools ends the day here. A three-day trip over the Vatnajokull, largest glacier in Europe, with swimming on top in natural hot springs, is available summer and winter. With enough snow, on any trip they will drag you on skis (supplied) behind the vehicle.

If you have a choice of routes, ask for a glacier and/or a highland route, since they are something you could never drive yourself in wintertime.

Other things to do in Reykjavik:

* Woolens shopping. Best prices are at the Handknitting Assn. store a couple of blocks from the corner of Laekjartorg and Austurstraeti.

* Art gallery hopping. Reykjavik has more art galleries per capita than Paris.

* Walks in Old Town (about three blocks off Lake Tjornin).

* Northern lights. If the sky is clear, most winter nights will be decorated with this flashing display of exquisite “loose electricity.”

* Museums. My favorites are the Natural History Museum and the National Museum, both small.

* Swimming outdoors. Two of Reykjavik’s geothermally heated swimming pools are near the hotels. The volcanic heat makes for incredible warmth--the “hot pots” alongside the larger pools are even too hot--and many Icelanders swim outside daily, all winter. Borrow a hotel towel and take your bathing suit along. The pools are flawlessly clean, and cost about $2 for as long as you want to stay.

For more information: Contact the Icelandic Tourist Board, 655 3rd Ave., 18th Floor, New York 10017; tel. (212) 949-2333.