NATURAL BEAUTY ICELAND

Ice caves and hot springs are luring tourists to the inland area of Husafell.

ICELAND has never been celebrated for its forests. The North Atlantic Island is just 2 percent wooded.

But the Husfell area of West Iceland is exceptionally lush and verdant covered in green grass and low shrubbery, an unexpected oasis of vegetation in the shadow of a glacier.

The bumpy seasonal road that leads straight from the Husafell to the Langjokull glacier offers views that are  extraterrestrial even for Iceland, with rocky fields of  black volcanic  lava intercut by frothy white rivers-

All set against a backdrop of low but - ice-capped mountains. The landscape looks startlingly lunar.

Since the introduction two summers ago of the into the Glacier tour  -a day long excursion that, as the name suggests,, takes visitors via man-made ice tunnels directly inside the  Langjokull glacier-

The formerly  off-the-tourist-radar area of  Husafell has begun to attract more foreigners, a perhaps inevitable consequence of the overall boom in tourism Iceland has seen in recent years.

In 2003, Iceland  welcomed 308,000 foreign adventure-seekers, by 2016, that figure had hit 1.8 million.

Evidence of the boom is everywhere, from the fluorescent waterproof parkas blanketing the streets of downtown Reykjavik, the capital, to the inexperienced drivers swerving all over the rural roads-

En route to the increasingly crowded tourist sites.