When we opened the curtains this morning we were greeted with a view of clouds rolling down the distant mountains. They looked like an avalanche captured in time, as beautiful as amazing.
We were picked up from our hotel and taken to get our hire car, and were on the road by 9am heading to the iconic Icelandic Golden Circle, featuring the 3 most visited tourist sites near Reykjavik. It drizzled on and off for most of the morning, but nothing too serious, and the afternoon was dry. A good start for our first day driving on the wrong (righthand) side of the road. Our theme for the day seemed to be, “Keep right, Keep right!” and “Not so far right!”, but we made it through our first day with both of us driving.
First stop was at Thingvellir National Park. This park is significant both historically and geologically. It is the birthplace of the Icelandic parliament, Althingi, in 930 AD. Making Iceland the oldest continuing democracy in the world. The parliament came about by an agreement between the Viking Clans and the area became the seat of government and law. Geologically it is the site of a continental rift, splitting Iceland between the North American and the Eurasian continents. Today you can literally walk between the two continents, in a valley about 20m wide, with shear cliffs 10 to 30+m high. The plates have been moving at the rate of 2.5cm per year for millennia, and continue to do so. This causes many earthquakes annually in Iceland. In the spring of 2011 a deep new rift opened up in the middle of the established rift walking path, it was thought to have been caused by earthquakes and the spring thaw. A local said it looked like some sort of Ginnungagap (an abyss in Norse mythology which came before genesis) We walked through the rift and onto a waterfall formed by the rising walls. The geology of the area is really impressive, it’s like the rocks are alive. It’s a fascinating area in so many ways.
From there we drove to the powerful Gullfoss, an enormously powerful waterfall on the Hvítá river. There is a stretch of maybe 150m of wild rapids before the waters fall over a diagonally placed waterfall. The water appears to boil and thunder as it falls over the edge. The power of the falls reminded us of a smaller version of “Diablo”, a section of the Iguazu Falls in South America, very impressive.
Next we drove to the final piece of the Golden Circle, Geysir. The area is strongly geothermally active, with steam vents oozing sulphur yellow slime, the still steaming remanent ponds of guysers of the past and the famous Strokkur guyser that erupts every 10 minutes or so. The area had been dormant for many years, but the eruption of Mount Hekla renewed its activity. We saw Strokkur shoot skyward 5 times while we were there, Deb got some great photos.
We then drove to the Seljalandsa River to see one of Icelands most visited waterfalls, Seljalandsfoss. The water here falls from a great height, maybe 50+m and crashes into a pool below it, but what makes it so visited is that you can walk behind the falls. A large lip over a recess in the cliff below makes a wide area behind the falls. It was an exciting feeling walking behind such a large waterfall, there was lots of spray and mist around the falls, we were glad we took our rain gear.
The final leg was to our stop for the night in Skogar. We checked in and walked to the Skogafoss, a 60m high waterfall, where according to legend, the first Viking settler of the area hid a treasure in the cave behind the cascade. We left that one for the locals. We can see the falls from our room, well the top part of them, the rest of our view is of the pastures, hills and rocky mountains of the area.
