Iceland, the Golden Circle and Snowmobiling

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Today I toured the Golden Circle and went snowmobiling on the second largest glacier in Europe. The Golden Circle is made up of three very unique sights. Pingvellir, (pronounces Thingvellir), Gullfoss and Geysir. Danni , my guide for the day, picked me up about 8:30 this morning. Considering I got home at 2:00am the night before and get up about 7:30 this morning I did not wake easily. Anyhow, I made it to the shower, which smells a bit of sulfur by the way, read rotten eggs, went down to breakfast, suited up and was on my way. I climbed into the closest truly functional thing to a monster truck. I’ll tell you more about the functional part later. Once in the two of us headed to another hotel to pick up five fairly hung over guys from Denmark. Nicolaj, Peter, Henrik, Lasse and Dennis. I will realize by the end of this trip that these guys, and the driver, are all a lot of fun; made for a really great day, once they came out of their alcohol induced stupor.

Our first stop on the tour was Pingvellir. This is Iceland’s first national park and the biggest tourist destination in Iceland. It is a historical site and quite beautiful as well. The Vikings established the world’s first ever democratic parliament in Pingvellir. The beauty of the place is caused by the separating of the two plates that I talked about in my previous blog. There are mossy lava flows, streams, rocky fissures, huge cubes of ice and brilliantly clear water. Danni also told us the story of how Christianity became the national religion of Iceland. Evidently the Pagan leader and the Christian leader had to come to an agreement on what it would be. The Christian leader offered the Pagan leader the right and told him to decide. He locked himself in a room for one day and one night. When he came out he let the law-speaker know. He let Christianity have it, but they had to honor the rights of the Pagans. A white flag pole marks the spot. I also read a story about a pool they used to drown the adulterous women in. Hmmmm….

Next stop the glacier for some snowmobiling. This was a good time. Good not great because half the time I got stuck behind some woman and her kid who were going like 25 miles an hour. Once I decided that I should just start passing everyone it became a lot more fun. The glacier was incredible. There was a volcano peaking up near the middle, beyond that, ice as far as the eye could see, save a few spots that had began to melt or had collected rain that showed blue. So this thing is huge, he told us in sq. kilometers, I don’t remember how big, but I do remember he said the ice was 400 meters thick beneath us. A quarter mile thick of ice! Incredible. We had a go for about an hour and a half total, a guide led us out towards the middle, we stopped for a short break and headed back. The best was when you could get a bit of separation, find a natural little ramp and catch some air. Turns out that kind of action is frowned upon. Oh well, made my trip a bit better. After we were done the guys took their ski suits off, we climbed back into our gigantic suburban and did a bit of off-roading to the Gullfoss.

Okay, so a bit is definitely an understatement. We drove through an effing river and up and down hills like it was a rollercoaster ride. There weren’t even roads in some cases, and the roads that I am calling roads were paths that others of these huge ass trucks had made. It was really incredible. Maybe I should apologize to all of those redneck kids from Superior, who go “mudding” and I call redneck kids from Superior. Nah… I was doing it in effing Iceland!

We get to Gullfoss and head down the stairs to misty air and the sound of thousands of gallons of water crashing 100 or so feet. This thing is spectacular. A double cascade waterfall that kicks up a wall of spray as it drops the 100 or so feet , as I mentioned before, and then disappears down a narrow ravine. I walked around a bit snapping photos and admiring the beauty and the power of the falls. I thought to myself, there is no way I could survive jumping into this churning, highly oxygenated water. Don’t ask me, I am weird. I wanted to throw my clothes off and jump into the clear waters at Pingveller too. I watch way too much Bear Grylls. After walking around for a bit and contemplating the best route if I were to jump into those freezing waters, I walked back up the stairs to the shop. There I had the most amazing stew I have ever eaten. I highly recommend the traditional lamb soup if you are ever here. In fact, make it a point to go. Great stuff and friendly servers.

Off to our last stop, Geysir. Pronounced, Gay-ser. This is actually the original “hot-water spout” that all other geysers are named after. This things supposedly spouts water up to 80 meters in the air, unfortunately it only goes off two times a day. So I went over to Strokkur, which went off about every five minutes, and had a plume of about 30 meters at it’s best. There were also brilliant blue pools of nearly boiling water, tiny bubbling geysers and steam just rising up from holes in the Earth. The whole place smelled a bit like rotten eggs, but who cares? It was great landscape to behold. After that we went to the tourist center there and browsed around for a bit before loading back up and heading back to Reykjavik.

I am back in my room now, thinking I might take a nap before grabbing something to eat and meeting my new friends from Denmark at Oliver’s to prime up for Runtur. Might be a crazy night. I have to be ready to go SCUBA diving in the Pingvellir by 10:00 am. This Runtur, pub crawl, is supposed to go until 5:00 am. I don’t know that I can make it. Sure as hell willing to give it a shot though!

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Photos

Pingvellir
Still pretty dark when we got there.

Pingvellir
This is the walk down. You can see the white flag pole.

Rocks of Ice
In Pingvellir ice littered a piece of the trail. Some of the guys were picking them up and throwing them in the water trying to get the others wet.

Changing Room
This was used as the changing room for the snowmobile suits.

Me on the Glacier
Surrounded by white

Me on Gullfoss
This is the spot where I was contemplating jumping from.

Traditional Lamb Soup
Get it. It is delicious.

Puffin
A huge stuffed puffin

Comments

[andy]

golden circle
hi ive got flight so iceland for the 20th October, i will be getting a car and doing a self drive tour of the SW and south coast all the way to Hofn then raceing back for the flight home. Do you know what driving conditions are like in october? Could you point me in the right direction so i could book the golden circle trip that you did, snowmobiling etc