Golden Circle

Sunday, June 1, 2014

What a difference a good night's sleep makes!  We had so much more energy today. But our legs are sore from so much walking yesterday!

While you folks back home had a high of 26C today, our high was 11C.  Hey, that was one whole degree more than we expected!  Not bad for sightseeing at all, if only you knew if it was going to rain or not.  Our faces are all red, probably from windburn (it certainly wasn't sun!)

The rental company (Thrifty) picked us up at our hotel along with two other Nordic Visitor couples doing a 10 day tour.  It took awhile to get the car, over an hour.  We were supposed to have a Ford Focus station wagon, but out of curiosity we asked about upgrading to a 4 wheel drive.  She got all excited and said she had a Volvo XC60, and ran across the road to get it.  We kind of wanted it but it was 30 euros more a day. Frankie talked her down to 25 euros extra a day - SOLD!  This car is power this and tilt that.  There are 3 different ways to adjust the seats, and the driver and passenger have separate temperature controls.  Also leather everything, not too hot in this weather, and we enjoyed the seat warmers.  We are the first ones to drive the car, it has 11 km on it from being driven from the harbour and that's it!  Plus it now feels like we have a kind of home base, it took us all of 3 minutes to fill up the backseat!

The car rental company gave us a GPS and all our hotels etc have GPS co-ordinates. Handy.  Plus you can search for certain "attractions" and it tells you how to get there. We noticed that it gave us even better routes than the road signs.

Our first stop was the grocery store.  All of our breakfasts are covered at our hotels, so we have decided to see if we can only do one sit-down meal a day.  We bought stuff we can munch on for lunches (including chocolate, of course) so that we only have to go to a restaurant for supper.  Meals are ridiculously expensive here - $50 per plate.  Ouch!

Today we drove out of Reykjavik for the "Golden Circle" route.  The roads are excellent but are single lane each direction, with NO shoulders.  Our airport driver told us that the roads here don't get potholes, and it seems he was right.  The speed limit is generally 90.  The traffic was not heavy at all, even on this popular tourist route.

We decided to start with the Geothermal Energy Exhibition at Hellisheiði Power Station. This is the world's largest geothermal power plant.  The plant is owned by Reykjavik Energy, and it provides 1/4 of the electricity and all of the hot water for Reykjavik. It was really easy to find a guide and he answered lots of our questions.  We learned how geothermal energy is harnessed in Iceland in a sustainable manner. Tectonic plates move and create heat and pressure in the earth's crust.  Their geothermal system in Iceland is amazing:  There are 57 bore holes for this plant, they go down an amazing 2000 - 3000 meters.  Pipes carry the "liquid" up, which is a mixture of steam and water.  It gets separated and the steam goes towards electricity and the water for heat and water for the homes. All the pipes are underground.  Water enters an Icelandic home at 80C, we did notice the water in our hotel room was rather hot!  An average household in Reykjavik has a monthly heat and water bill of $75.  All the leftover water is recycled to melt snow. Hey, maybe that's why there are no potholes!

The GPS didn't know about our next location, but we found it anyway, yeah for us. Sites of interest are marked with roadsigns with a type of celtic square on them. Kerið (the last letter is like a d but pronounced th) is a 3000 year crater that is 55 meters deep. It has left a hole in the earth about 270 meters long and 170 meters wide. There is a clear blue lake at the base. Apparently when the water level rises in Kerið, it falls by the same amount in a small nearby lake. We walked all the way around the top, and then took a path down right to the lake.  

Next was Þingvellir National Park (pronounced think-vet-lif), which is the site of the Althing, the world's oldest parliament (930 AD). The national park is a UNESCO world heritage site. It is situated in a rift valley that was formed by the separation of the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates. This is the geological meeting point of two continents.  We caught sight of a waterfall (Oxararfoss) and stopped to see it. This led us right to the most popular hiking path. It leads to a high rock wall called Lögberg (Law Rock) where the guardian of the law would recite  laws by memory to the people. There are no real remains of the old parliament site, just fragments of 50 booths built from turf and stone.  Remains from the 10^th century are believed to be buried underground. Nearby was the Drekkingarhylur (Drowning) Pool, where several dozen women suspected of witchcraft were drowned.  Lucky men got to be beheaded.  

We found the Silfra fissure, Iceland´s most famous dive and snorkel site. In Silfra you dive or snorkel between 2 continents, with over 100m visibility.

Off to find Geysir (pronounced gee-ser, an Icelandic word meaning gusher) in the Haukadalur Valley is the most famous geyser in the world. All geysers are named after this one. At its most active, its eruptions spouted scalding geothermal water some 60-80 metres into the air. It was dormant for many years, during which time enthusiastic tourists tried to waken it by throwing garbage and rocks into it. It didn't work, so everyone was surprised when Geysir was reawakened in 2000 by a series of earthquakes. Today it erupts almost daily and sometimes several times a day, but only to a height of 10 meters. Because it is not predictable, most people view the nearby Strokkur geyser which erupts every 2-3 minutes to a height of 20 meters. An average of 7 tourists a week are scalded because they put their hands into the thermal pools to test the water temperature.  Yes, Anton had to test the water.

We got soaked at Geysir, not because of the mist, but because all of a sudden it decided to rain.  The weather here is SO unpredictable!  It literally goes from sunny to raining and back again in 10 seconds flat. We've been lucky so far, but after Geysir it was non-stop rain for the rest of the day.

Our last stop of the day was Gullfoss, the Golden Falls, which measures 105 ft tall. The spectacular cascade of Gullfoss in the Hvítá River is actually two separate waterfalls (a double cascade), the upper one with a drop of 11 metres and the lower 21 metres. It turns at right angles in mid-drop. The water drops into a narrow canyon which is 70 meters deep and 2.5 km long. The visitor center is named after Sigríður Tómasdóttir, a woman who threatened to throw herself into the falls because foreign investors wanted to flood the falls for a hydroelectric reservoir. The government intervened and bought the waterfalls and they became the property of the nation.

We went to the village of Reykholt in hopes of finding the recommended restaurant Kaffi Klettur, and the GPS led us on a wild goose chase until we pulled into an empty parking lot and saw the boarded up sign. Someone should update their recommendations, AND the GPS!  Lucky for us Kafe Mika was right across the road, and they were so friendly and the food was excellent!  The music was good too, so we treated ourselves to hot chocolate and Darjeeling tea at $4 each, and stayed awhile. At that price, we are mostly drinking water.

We found Hotel Hekla.  We had wondered why we were supposed to call them if we would be arriving after 8 pm.  It's a cross between a hotel and a guesthouse.  We have a great peaceful room overlooking a farm.  We think.  Hotel Hekla is named after Iceland's most famous volcano, which is nearby.  It has been active for thousands of years, and has erupted about 20 times since Iceland was inhabited. Early settlers believed Hekla to be the entrance to hell. It has erupted 5 times in the last century. The last eruption was in 2000.

The second night of using a hairdryer to dry out shoes.  Amazingly, our soaked jeans are dry already (no humidity).