Day 20 - Thermal Pools, Geysers and Waterfalls in Iceland

Today was off to a kind of early start when our flight touched down at Reykjavik’s International Airport at 6:10am, being 2:10am Boston time. “Hello jet lag my old friend, Time to walk with you again” (apologies to Simon & Garfunkel). Despite actually having an empty seat beside me I wasn’t able to garner a whole lot of sleep during the four and a half hour flight.


For some reason after walking from the plane across the tarmac to the Arrival Gate (and getting the first stamp in my new passport) we had to walk back outside to be bussed to the main terminal for baggage collection even though the various arrival gates seemed to be connected via covered walkways. Once through Customs the first task was to get some of local Icelandic Kroner and try and work out exactly what it was worth, which always a bit harder when you are dealing with a currency where the smallest note is a 500.

Collecting my pre-booked and paid rental car turned out to be a much greater ordeal that I had imaged. Firstly because the group in front of me took forever (were they really only renting one?) and secondly because my booking had been messed up a bit. Well, a fair bit as it turned out. For a start it had been booked for collection from Reykjavik’s Domestic Airport (yeh, who knew Reykjavik was big enough to have separate airports, miles apart?). Plus, as they eventually realized, because it had been booked for 23rd to 27th September instead of August.

Once all that was sorted out I then went to the Information Counter to confirm directions to the nearby Blue Lagoon thermal pools only to have to wait while the only attendant had to ring around and book three separate night’s accommodation for a French family. Seriously, who in this age of the internet doesn’t at least have their first night’s accommodation arranged before they arrive in a new country? But the time wasn’t completely wasted. As I browsed the postcard stand I worked out where I was going to drive today between leaving the Blue Lagoon and arriving at my (pre-booked) first night’s accommodation in Akranes.

I made it to the Blue Lagoon with a minimum of fuss, in my first right-hand drive in three years. However unlike the last few right-hand drive car’s I have driven, this one has a manual transmission - which found me occasionally trying to change gears with the door handle (give me a break, I was jet lagged remember!). Anyway the Blue Lagoon was quiet nice. The silica content of the thermal pools is what gives them their distinctive colour and the mineral content is supposed to be good for ones skin. I was in the waters for about an hour – not as long as Lee spends in the surf but enough time to turn into a prune! One finds patches of warmer water as one moves around the large pool; at one point I found one significantly warmer that had me moving on quite quickly. I sampled the sauna and massaging waters of the waterfall, however I did resist the practice of smearing some of the white mud on my face despite the supposed health benefits of so doing.

Leaving the Blue Lagoon the plan was to drive to see the geyser at Geysir (pretty clever with the place names these Icelanders!) and the waterfall at Gullfoss. I took the coast road via Krysuvik which soon turned into a gravel path for about 20-30 kms that had me wondering if I had missed a turn somewhere. When I reached the picturesque little church at the village of Strandarkirkja I had to put the seat back and have a snooze for an hour or so or I was in serious danger of falling asleep at the wheel and missing more than just a turn. I had a (late) lunch stop in Selfoss, by which time the road had improved markedly, and made it to Geysir with numerous photo stops to capture some of the beautiful scenery that just seemed to keep on coming.

The old geyser at Geysir

The geyser was quite active, going off usually every three to six minutes. At one point it went off three times in about a minute. The height of each “eruption” varied, so some were more spectacular than others, but you can get quite close and you can see the water rushing back into the deep pipe like hole after each blast. From there it was only about a 10 minute drive to the Gullfoss waterfall which is pretty spectacular. The waterfall is in two steps at 90 degrees to each other, with the second step dropping into a deep ravine much like the Victoria Falls. From above the falls there were distant views of a big glacier on Langjőkull.



The Gullfoss waterfall

 By now it was well after 6:00pm, though it was still quite light despite the overcast conditions, as I headed back westwards to my accommodation in Akranes, just north of Reykjavik. It was a very pretty drive, but I resisted a number of photo-worthy stops including those around the Pingvalavatn lake. I opted to part with 1000K to drive the tunnel under Hvalfjordur rather than take the slower scenic route around as by then it was nearly 8:00pm and I was feeling quite hungry as well. After checking into the quaint little hostel I walked up to the nearby bistro for a delicious dinner – while I also made good use of a free Wi-Fi network that was evidently somewhere nearby.

And so ended my first day in Iceland. Already I am wondering what dolt thought that five and a half days would ever be enough to do it justice. There is so much beautiful scenery and quite a few nice walks available as well as the scenic drives. I guess I’ll just have to do the best I can in the time available.