The Icelandic landscapes are nothing if not dramatic. And while there was girly silliness, wonderful conversations with strangers and the discovery that shark tastes like something has rotted in your mouth, the landscapes remain most vivid in my memory.

Driving along the South Coast, on one side lies ocean - a spellbinding churning, bashing and mixing ocean with waves I would dare not tempt - and on the other side lay mountains. R

ugged beasts composed of earth, stone and ancient volcanic rock; with the space between a nothingness of black sand.

Heading east out of Reykjavik, through Vik and further on, one could be fooled into believing that at one point a giant hand came and ripped a large piece of the coast away, leaving the mountains as remnants of a landscape which has been torn. You get the feeling as if you were driving through the base of a canyon with only one side, the other taken by the sea.

Iceland feels as though it is ancient earth, preserved. Abandoned stone houses, homes built into rocks and underground, caves of both ice and rock and a nothingness that goes on and on, and on.

What is most striking about this place, despite its glaciers, ice caps, volcanoes and hot springs, is its desolation.

One could be alone in Iceland. Completely alone. With no one or no thing or no life, aside from the life of the fire beneath your feat or the water rushing by you.

Perhaps it is just this, the emptiness, the lack of animal life or natural vegetation which makes the features of this place so striking. The nothingness imposing the natural beauty on us with far more intensity than in places where obstructions lie at their base or skyscrapers compete for attention.

Volcanoes, earthquakes, floods, geysers, hot, cold, light, darkness.... It feels as if all the earth, in all its greatness and intensity collides here, in Iceland. To be sure, I have not seen all the earth. But Iceland, in its Majesty, makes me question if anything can be as intense, or striking in its presence. The land here seems as if it holds some ancient secret that the modern world has forgotten.

The views here are enticing, awesome (in the biblical sense of the word) and yet at the same time fear-inducing. No wonder ancient peoples believed in the gods of the earth, how could you not when the landscapes evoke such strong emotion? This clash of landscape leaves one without words. You can only stare and appreciate the immense beauty which lies before you. In every moment on this island my mind was consumed with a feeling of intense gratitude. So much so that there was no room for any other thought outside the one of deep thankfulness.