We woke up at approximately 7AM and I looked outside, expecting rain, but the sun was out there already! In the weeks before this trip we checked the weather daily and rain was forecast for every single day. And every day for the next ten days. And when those ten days were over, the weather app showed rain for the next ten. All I wanted was at least one sunny day, and I figured that yesterday had been our lucky day, but maybe….fingers crossed….today will be lucky too?
I’d like to say that I jumped out of bed, hopped in the shower and was ready to go, but that wasn’t quite true. I don’t jump out of bed anymore for fear of snapping something and while I did hop in the shower that’s because it was on a pedestal about 8 inches high. It was oddly shaped, almost like a trapezoid, a strange little corner shower, and the shower curtain came nowhere close to fitting. It was a handheld nozzle, which is not unusual, but it didn't have a hook to hang it from, just a ledge about waist height. The shower curtain needed to be held shut with one hand to keep torrents of water from flooding the bathroom and then the other hand had to hold the nozzle and I didn’t have a third hand to use soap. It was a conundrum for sure. I tried so hard to be quick and efficient, but the controls were finicky, and the hot water is HOT…and I kept dropping the nozzle and dropping the soap and struggling with the shower curtain, and when I got out it was like stepping into a bathtub…water everywhere. *sigh*. When we walked into this room for the first time yesterday, Steven noticed the hardwood floor outside the bathroom was seriously warped, so I guess I’m not the only one who can’t shower without causing a disaster. I ended up using almost all the towels (of which we only had two bath towels and one hand towel!) to mop up my mess. Good thing I woke up early.
But eventually we were ready to head downstairs for a quick breakfast and to check out the neighbourhood before our 12 o’clock tour of The Golden Circle.
Our hotel was in a fairly central area, on a corner where one street had lots of shopping, one had restaurants and hotels, one went towards the ocean (only 2 blocks away) and the other was more local with apartment buildings. Everything was very clean, buses zipped by every few minutes and back-packers were everywhere, loaded to the gills with their hiking necessities. Some of those packs must weigh 65 pounds. There was a time when I would have loved to do that, except that’s not true at all. There has never been a time when I wanted to do that. All the stores are filled with puffy coats, back-packs, hiking gear etc. There are a lot of second hand stores with all the gear as well, I guess when the hikers are on their way home, they sell their items to lessen their load, and newcomers can pick up quality gear at a good price. We checked out hiking boots, a decent (read: not overly great) pair was easily in the $400 range. I will say though, I have friends and nieces who hike and it really does look like a glorious way to see the world. It’s just not for me.
So we wandered the streets for a bit, walked down to the ocean where there is a walking/biking trail that winds all around the waterfront. The rocks are huge and they seem to have been polished, people are curled up, just watching the waves and even reading in the sunshine. It’s very peaceful, and again I have to mention the cleanliness. Not a scrap of paper anywhere.
The tour I had booked for this afternoon had their pickup spot directly in front of our hotel, so that was super handy. I chose a small-group tour company that only had 16 passengers (because, you know, people….) and they were on time to the minute.
The Golden Circle is a 230-km loop from Reykjavik that ties together three of Iceland’s most famous natural sights, as well as some other stops. Our first stop was Thingvellir National Park, which is a UNESCO World Heritage site, as well as being the place where a lot of Game of Thrones was filmed, a show that I have never seen, so I was not one of the excited people taking photos of places that they recognized from the show. This is the location of Icelands first parliament however, making it the oldest parliament in the world. First established in 930 AD, it was an open air assembly where villages gathered to administer laws and justice. I can picture how it would have been, fires with roasting meat, small huts with familes enjoying the annual gathering, people trading their wares with each other.
But more interesting is the fact that this is the only place in the world where you can stand between two continental plates, the North American Plate and the Eurasian Plate. They are slowly pulling apart at the rate of approximately an inch a year, which is really rather a lot when you think about it. You can physically see and walk between the two plates.
A lot of social media influencers post pictures of themselves with their hands touching both sides of a narrow gorge, saying they are touching both North America and Europe at the same time, but that’s a fallacy, the tectonic plates don’t really work that way, and besides, the actual rift is too wide to touch both sides at the same time.
The second stop was the Gullfoss waterfall. Gullfoss means “Golden Falls” and it was quite spectacular. The force of the water causes a huge amount of wind and spray. Considering how hot it was as we stepped out of the bus, it was quite amazing how windy and cold it got within 50 feet. My hair was a whirl of tornado atop my head and men’s hats were flying everywhere. It has two major drops, so it’s sort like two waterfalls in one. The river enters a large, deep gorge and carries on to the ocean.
It was featured a lot in the TV series Vikings.
The next stop was Geysir Geothermal Area. The whole area sits on top of a vast boiling cauldron. The most famous geyser here is Strokkur which erupts every 5-7 minutes, along with other smaller ones. There are pools of boiling water, bubbling mud pits and steaming fumeroles. It’s how I imagine being on another planet would be. It’s similar to Yellowstone, but more otherworldly. (The English word “geyser” is from the Icelandic word “geysir”)
Because the geyser erupts so frequently, there are never too many people waiting there, so it’s easy to get a nice view. The sulphur smell wasn’t very bad at all, although to be honest, everywhere in Iceland smells slightly sulphurous when you turn the hot water on, but the cold water is the best in the world. Literally.
As we were leaving here, our bus driver hit some sort of bump or rock and there was a large noise. Steven looked at me and said “Well, that’s gonna be a problem”, but she kept on going. We drove a bit more and she suddenly said “I think we will stop and visit some Icelandic horses”, which of course no one minded at all, but it hadn’t been on our itinerary.
We had a quick lesson on the horses, which of course everyone calls them Icelandic ponies, and that annoys the owners to no end, as they are not ponies at all. They have a fascinating history though:
They were brought here by the Vikings in approximately the year 930. Of course the Vikings only brought their strongest horses, and for over 1,000 years there has been absolutely no crossbreeding in Iceland and this extraordinary isolation has allowed the breed to maintain it’s purity, so the horses are now considered the purest breed in the world.
Aside from that, they also have the ability to survive in a harsh climate, having an unusual double coat and they are also long lived.
Most horses have 3 gaits; walk, trot and gallop, but these amazing ponies…oops, horses, have 2 extra gaits…they can tölt and flugskeiǒ. I am not a horse person at all, so I have no idea what this means, other than it is quite incredible and fun to say.
Because of their purity, they have no afflictions or diseases and national laws are in place (and very strict) which prevent any foreign born horse from being imported into the country and any exported animal is never permitted to return. Thus, breeders, racers etc only send their second or third best horses out of the country, keeping their best horses for national breeding programs, since #2 and #3 will never return.
So as we are petting the horses, we notice the hood of the bus is up and our driver is talking on her phone to someone, and sure enough, something is leaking out from under the engine.
She told us that the steering felt wrong and she had phoned a friend. Before we knew it, this large beefed-up truck roars up and a large beefed-up Viking jumps out. They confabbed a minute and she learned that the power steering fluid was somehow gone. (Couldn’t have been the large object she hit? 😉) The Viking (because I will continue to insist that we were rescued by a Viking) fixed it enough so that we could drive a couple of miles down the road back to the geysir place where there was a large gift shop, restaurant and museum. It was a fine place to wait for a new bus and I think the gift shop (which was massive!) had an influx of extra sales.
There was an odd statue outside the museum, a young man on another man’s shoulders, grasping his underwear. Turns out that wrestling is the national sport and the museum is dedicated to all things wrestling in Iceland. but whoever designed this statue must have been laughing. Or drunk.
Eventually our new bus came and we continued on. The break had been welcome, some shopping, a snack and a bathroom break. It was maybe an hour extra in our day.
Next, and final stop was Kerid or Kerið crater, also called The Eye of the World or The Eye of God, depending on your beliefs, because it looks remarkably like a human eye when seen from an aerial view. It’s a 6,500 year old crater formed when a volcano collapsed into itself. I’ve seen pictures of it before, from above, and while most of them are AI generated to look way too human, it is still a stunning sight.
After this we drove back to Reykjavik, had a fish & chip dinner and hit the sack, in our tiny little beds. Our open window, even though we were on the 4th floor, let in the sounds of young people laughing and having a bit of a party in the pedestrian street only below us. In hindsight I guess they could have been arguing and taunting each other because I couldn’t understand a word they were saying, but it sounded pleasant. It had been a spectacular day, full of amazing things. What a country!
The Kerið crater. It was quite large, if you zoom in you can see people near the water at the 10 0’clock position.
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