Advertisement
Published: September 7th 2005
Edit Blog Post
Strokker
Strokker is the smaller but more reliable of the geysers. The mother geyser is called Geysir (one of the few Icelandic words to make it to English use). It goes off every five minutes or so. Geysir goes off about twice a day and is about double the size of this one. Just look at the photos if you're not into reading all this - I'll probably wax lyrical for paragraphs about Iceland because it was so great.
I'm avoiding looking at my credit card statement at the moment. It will just upset me after having had such a lovely time in Iceland. I feel very privileged for being able to go there - it's not exactly somewhere that would be affordable for the impoverished student backpacker. I had a pot of beer and then realised it had just cost me about $15. The trip was definitely worth the expense though as Iceland is one of the most beautiful places I've been, if not a bit unusual in its appearance.
I learned a lot about geology while I was there as everything to do with the country revolves around the landscape which has been formed by virtue of being over the joint of two tectonic plates which are moving apart. This means that volcanoes are active everywhere and the country itself has been formed over time by a build up of lava coming up originally from the ocean floor. Regular eruptions mean that the landscape is mostly lava fields - big
Kerith
Kerith is an extinct volcano crater which has filled with water and is now a beautiful lake. expanses of rocks devoid of vegetation. There are virtually no trees there and all fruit and veg has to be imported with only a little grown in greenhouses.
I based myself in Reykjavik and did a few day trips from there as well as having some time to just kick it around town. I say town rather than city as it definitely had the feel of a country town. Less than 300,000 people live in the whole country which is roughly the size of Great Britain.
The first day I spent walking a million miles through Reykjavik. There isn't heaps and heaps to see there but there is a really interesting church up on the hill, a lot of public art sculptures and a quiet main street that at 11am had barely a shop open. There are lots of funky cafes and bars around and lots of nice restaurants... although I'll have to take the Lonely Planet's advice on this as generally I stuck to my packets of biscuits and two minute noodles.
Day two was spent going on the tourist circuit which is a trip to what is called the Golden Circle. I did a bus
Gulfoss
Gulfoss, or Gold Waterfall, is beautiful and the sun and mist made this lovely rainbow. There were a fair few tourists around but it's amazing really how few considering how spectacular it was. tour to see the key highlights of anyone's trip to Iceland: the Gulfoss waterfall, the Kerith crater lake, the geysers at... well, Geysir, and Thingvallir national park, the site of the original Icelandic government and the oldest functioning democracy which is over 1000 years old and still going strong. We had beautiful weather as you can probably see from the photos which made viewing these places even more picturesque.
The next day I went on a twelve hour journey on a trip out to Porsmork which is a national park area. It's not a national park in the sense which I was familiar with though as there was virtually no vegetation and just massive expanses of rocky lava fields, some with moss starting to grow on them but mainly just rocks as they are relatively new. We had a big 4WD vehicle to get us over the rocks and rivers which was fun. Porsmork is between three glaciers which makes for spectacular scenery. We got up close to one of the glaciers where a section had formed on the side of the mountain and fed into a lagoon of icebergs. We climbed up a mountain - I didn't make
it the whole way as I had a scary attack of vertigo near the top when I looked back down. It seemed like a sheer drop and it freaked me out. I had dreams of falling off cliffs that night. We hiked through a canyon to a cave which was nice and also saw some more waterfalls.
I chilled out in Reykjavik the next day and saw my second movie there. (I had to do something at night - I was on my own and the beer was too expensive!) I saw a documentary made by this crazy guy who chases erupting volcanos to film. I slept. I ate. I walked. It was nice to relax.
On my last day there I spent the morning at the famous Blue Lagoon before heading to the airport at Keflavik which is 40km south of Reykjavik. This was amazing. The water was so hot in places it was unbearable. It came directly out of the ground and into the lake which is a bright shade of blue due to all the minerals in the water. It was really relaxing and as I got there at 9am there weren't many people there,
Lava Fields
This is the typical landscape across most of Iceland. just a bunch of old Germans (who were typical of most tourists I came across in Iceland). There were saunas there and a massaging waterfall and if you wanted you could have a massage in the water. It was just wonderful.
Iceland is one of my faves. It's definitely a highlight of this trip and if I had a million dollars I'd love to go back and explore it for weeks.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.164s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 12; qc: 66; dbt: 0.0634s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb
Karen Willett
non-member comment
Jealous
HI Jess, This trip looks awesome and I am well jealous of you making to Iceland. That Blue Lagoon continues to call me!