Category: trip reports

Ubiquitous Icelandic sheep is ubiquitous
 

Sey̡isfj̦r̡ur church Рone of the many cute painted churches you see around Iceland
 

Driving along the east coast on a blustery day
 

The Moosling, terribly excited about all the rocks he has to eat
 

Driving up alongside a rampaging glacier – in places the road was so steep you could barely see past the bonnet
 

Glacier and sea – it was a fantastic view, and hard to capture in a single photograph
 

Glacier close-up

Askja is a stratovolcano in the Icelandic highlands. We headed straight there along the F910 in the morning, and managed to cross both of the fords on the road (although there was a lot of eye closing, and we wouldn’t have wanted to stop in one of them). Wending our way through endless circles, we drove on through the Ódáðahraun (Evil Deeds Lava). Driving through old lava flows is not a straight road kind of process.

The clouds were lurking low, and we couldn’t see the Queen of Mountains, nor Askja itself.

Driving on up past the huts, we entered the cloud. Sitting in the parking lot, it started raining. Miserable and cold outside, we decided to hang out and eat lunch before walking in to the crater lakes.

Öskjuvatn was the larger lake, from a huge 1875 eruption. Viti, the smaller, was filled with semi-warm water. Not quite hot spring temperature, it hovered around an indoor swimming pool kind of temperature

Warm enough that it seemed a good idea to clamber down the muddy sides of the crater and go for a swim. Shortly beforehand it had been snowing – the swim was brief.

And then it was back again, out along the path (we made the Moosling crawl the whole way).

And back out to the Ring Road – but first, the lava, and the rivers to ford.

Glacial melt rivers like this made me very appreciative of bridges

Pottering around in the north of the country…

Horses! The Icelandic horses were everyhere, often running along in the distinctive fifth gait

Around the corner from Husavik, where we decided not to go whale watching because it was expensive and they weren’t even using the best boats at the moment – and it was mainly about the sailing, not the whales

Geothermally active areas around Krafla. Don’t believe the Lonely Planet when it says the Stora-Viti crater “reveals a stunning secret when you reach its rim”. There’s just a bit of water in there, and it’s not even a very exciting colour if it’s overcast.

Playing on solidified lava around Krafla. Some of it was still steaming and sulfurous, the earth’s crust is thin here, and Krafla is still active.

More of the Krafla area

Driving around Lake Myvatn. There were a lot of ‘tourist attractions’ here, and we weren’t fussed by most of them. The Hverfell crater (a classic tephra ring) is lurking darkly by the lake, and does look quite cool. The lake itself is home to Marimo Balls – balls of algae that only grow in one other place in the world, Lake Akan in Japan, where we’ve also been (entirely coincidental, we’re not algae ball fiends). The solidified lava you can see flowing down to the lake came from an eruption of Krafla in 1729 – it very impressively only just spared the wooden church in town, which is still standing.

Hverir, another geothermal area near Lake Myvatn

Tame arctic fox at Möðrudalur.

Arctic fox and dog, firm friends (bringing back memories of my own pet fox… the dogs treat them as cheeky puppies, which no doubt they are)

Our 4WD picked up (thankfully we were upgraded from the tiny toy Suzuki Jimny to the slightly less tiny Suzuki Grand Vitara) we set off into the great unknown. Not that unknown though, as initially we drove around the famed ‘Golden Triangle’, consisting of Þingvellir, Geysir and Gullfoss.

Conclusion: They’re not that golden, unless that’s as far from Reykjavik as you’re able to get.

Þingvellir is mainly of interest as a historical site, being the place where Iceland’s first parliament was founded back in 930, and continued for centuries. It’s also smack bang on the divide between the North American and Eurasian continental plates, so there are some cool holes in the ground, and bits of ground being unexpectedly higher than other bits beside it.

Geysir was the source of the English word geyser. It only geyses sporadically now though, and the regular erupter is Strokkur (which only did a few half-hearted flubs while we were there – apparently it reaches 30m, I don’t think any of the eruptions we saw topped 10m)

Gullfoss is a waterfall (foss = falls). I’ll save the photo of that for a massive Foss post, as there were quite a lot of them by the end of the trip. But after driving around the three biggest tourist attractions in Iceland, we were happy to dive off onto a random 4WD track, and camp by the foot of a glacier.

There was just one other vehicle there, and they seemed happy to keep to themselves. After hiking up the mountain by our tent and taking some photos, we had some dinner and curled up in the warm to sleep.

The next morning we set off back into civilisation to find some groceries, and then it was to be northwards and into the highlands.