Road trip day!
We wanted to drive the Golden Circle today, a famous round trip drive that takes in some of the highlights here in south-western Iceland. Our innkeeper gave me the heads up on a few side roads to check out.
We headed out of Reykjavik on Hwy 1 south, and then cut onto 435 towards Nesjavellir. This part was interesting, at first because we were in the middle of nowhere for the first long part. No houses, no traffic, no animals... when Gail finally spotted a bird, I almost wanted to stop and get a photo of it. Great photos of the empty road, lava fields covered with that mossy grass stretching off to the distant snowy mountains. It makes Hwy 50 through Nevada seem over populated in comparison. When we got to the mountains, however, it really got spectacular. We wound our way up and into some pretty, green grassy valley surrounded by high cliffs dotted with snow banks. Up, up and through the pass, and there below we saw our first destination:
Þingvellir (Thingvellir - how do you like that cool letter they use for the TH?).
Anyway, Þingvellir National Park is a UNESCO world site, and it is at the top of a huge lake, under the Langjökull Glacier. So we headed up along the lake, across the top where the main part of the park seems to be, then down the other side. The wind was howling, but it was not raining and there was actually a "forest" of low bushy plants and some pines about ten to twenty-five feet tall.
I wish I had my truck, as there are a lot of cool looking 4WD roads up to the glacier and places between. Also, there are huts to camp in back there somewhere.
We hooked over onto Hwy 365 along a spectacular mountain range and to Geysir. There really are geysers at Geysir, and supposedly this is the origin of the word we use in English. There is one called Strokkur which erupts once or twice every six minutes or so. We could not believe how close to the geyser and the hot springs we were allowed to stand; close enough we could look into the bubbling crater of water and watch it bubble, churn, swell, sink then suddenly explode! Though we were freezing, we stayed and watched it erupt five or six times. There were at least a dozen springs and pools, and a couple other geysers, though none of the others erupted while we were there. Well, the wind was wicked, our hands were frozen, so we decided to stop in the gas station slash gift store slash cafe for a warm bite. I had a bowl of traditional lamb soup which was just the right thing.
We went on another ten kilometers to Gullfoss waterfall, known as one of Iceland's largest and most spectacular. I think this was about the most beautiful waterfall I have ever seen. It comes down in two layers, the top drop is wide, skewed to the right and broken by rocks and ledges into many separate waterfalls all jumbled together. The water briefly regroups before dropping off a long continuous ledge, skewed and offset to the left. For me, this was the most beautiful thing so far. OK, so we OOOOO'd and AHHHH'd then took off on Hwy 35 to Reykholt and Selfoss, stopping along the way to see the crystal blue lake in the bottom of 500 foot deep Kerid crater.
We caught Hwy 1 heading north back to Reykjavik, and stopped in Hveragerði to get directions to this valley I wanted to hike up. You see, three km up the valley is a hot river, and you can just go soak in it. The girl said you just head up river and test the water as you go until it is the right temperature, then just jump in! OK then! Well, as we started driving up the valley, the dark clouds that had been threatening all day suddenly opened up and let loose.
Yup, Freyr, the Norse god of rain (and, ironically, sun) got fed up and let us have it. I actually parked, got out of the car and spent a couple delusional minutes trying go convince myself that I was not getting soaked... Needless to say, the hike was off.
All in all it was about a 325 km day.
We got back to our room, dried off, had a glass of wine and headed up by the church to a local café we saw yesterday.
Café Loki makes traditional Icelandic homemade food, using family recipes over 150 years old. Loki was one of the Norse gods, along with Thor and Odin, and my new enemy Freyr.
So, I had a traditional Icelandic meal: a slice of rye bread with mashed fish, another slice with smoked trout. Flatbread with smoked lamb, dried fish with butter, and fermented shark.
Gail got a trout tarte with salad, and rye bread ice cream for dessert. Yes, you read that right.
My food was all pretty tasty except the shark. "Oh." says the waitress, "Did I forget to tell you? Don't smell it..." and the dried fish, which was good but seemed a little like chewing cardboard. Gail's food was great too, and the rye bread ice cream with rhubarb sauce and fresh whipped cream was amazing.
Meanwhile Freyr heard me cuss him out because the rain just increased in intensity the whole time.
We hibernated back in the room about 22:00 to dry off and drink tea in the never-ending light of day.
Tomorrow we head south and east across the island to Vik, where we spend two nights. True facts of Ísland:
I figured out I could Google, copy and paste the cool letter D they use here. So here it is: Ð and ð. It is called an "eth."
Ísland, like other European countries, has this great system at stoplights. You know how the light goes green to yellow, so you know to get ready to stop? Well, when you are at a red light, there is a red and yellow simultaneous light so you know to start going.
Iceland is a very open and gay friendly country, and it is nothing at all to see male couples, female couples and mixed couples walking around holding hands. So far it has not destroyed our traditional marriage, and I will be sure to update this blog post when it does.
They have their version of a 7-11 here, but they are just family run Minni Stores. Today I was getting tired driving, so we stopped in the settlement of Borg (try to find that on the map!) at the Borg Minni for a lemon water.
The coins all have fish on them, naturally.
You can buy reindeer, seal and sheep pelts at stores everywhere. Not pieces of fur, the whole hide. Reindeer is amazingly soft.
"Foss" is waterfall, so there is Gullfoss, tomorrow we'll see Selialandfoss and Swartzfoss. I wonder if my teeth will hurt when we see DentalFoss?