Day Four: Countryside and Our departure from the Land of Ice

Please bare with the length of this post; there was a lot to fit into this one!





Awake and refreshed.

Rob and I had grand plans of exploration and learning this morning. We wanted to wake up early and head into the Southwest part of Reykjavik to see the parliament buildings and the university, as well as check out the National Museum, which apparently has a really cool exhibit on the genetic project taken on to track back lineages in Iceland all the way to the Vikings.

However, after all the traveling and exploration and learning (and late nights and early mornings), we ended up sleeping in, having a late breakfast, checking out and taking the Flybus to the airport. I’m currently on the Plane to Amsterdam via Iceland Air.

Despite the fact that we didn’t do anything TOO interesting today - except that Rob almost brought a knife on the plane… by accident of course - I still have lots of interesting things to talk about since I didn’t blog yet about yesterdays action-packed excursion.

We were up early to get our rental car from Procar. They were incredibly helpful and the gentleman who picked us up from the hotel to bring us to the car lot improved on our planned route. Even though our reservation for the car ended up mistakenly being for 10/08/2010 instead of 08/10/2010, they helped us out and gave us a car anyway. A better car (Subaru Forester instead of a Nissan Micra). With GPS. Which was awesome.

So we took off and after a little getting used to the roads and the map (I was a little rusty at being navigator), we made it out to the open highway on the Ringroad. This road takes you on a route around Iceland.



Once on our way, we were absolutely stunned by the rugged beauty of Iceland’s landscape. The road that the Procar man suggested we take deviated from the Ringroad but, as he said, “You won’t miss anything and you’ll see a lot more”. Man was he right! The road took us directly through the mountainous region of Þingvallavatn that we assume was built for one reason only: ease of maintenance for the hot water pipes that run up and through this region. Rob had SO much fun navigating the winding, narrow but fully paved road and I had a great time taking pictures, counting sheep and waiting to see what would find us over the next hill.

Something very interesting about the landscape of Iceland is that it’s so incredibly diverse. We talked about how cool it was to crest a hill or turn a corner and realize you were no longer in a mountain but in a swamp or fertile farm land or rocky dessert. And the weather was just as territorial (which I assume has much to do with being so close to weather-making mountains).



We made our way up to Þingvellir National Park that follows this really cool rift valley where the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates are pulling apart. The result is a rift that pulls all the way across Iceland but is most obvious in the Park at 4km wide by 40m deep extending 16km. So cool. We didn’t stop to check it out on foot because there were so many tourists and buses that we just moved on.

Once we were out of the National Park, we headed east toward Geysir, which is a huge tourist attraction and definitely worth at least a stop over. It’s the site of the largest active geyser in Iceland, called Strokkur. It erupts every 5-10 minutes right now, and according to the Procar guy, is the most active it’s been in a while. We managed to get a few ok pictures, but Rob suggested maybe he’d try getting in on video instead and almost as soon as he’d started filming, Strokkur blew, as you can see in the YouTube video I posted yesterday. From there we mailed some postcards and then got back in the car to head south towards Gulfoss.

Having a car rental is great in Iceland. There are a million tour busses that you can take to see almost everything we saw, but being able to pick and choose and take as long (or as short) at your destinations was really great. Rob said that the driving was really fun and interesting. I had a great time being the navigator and tour guide by reading information out of our Rough Guides book. It’s easy to replicate a tour with a car and a travel book.


Gulfoss is a two-step waterfall which is the most powerful waterfall in all of Europe. Having grown up so close the Niagara Falls, it wasn’t as strikingly large, but the more natural surroundings and the fact that the only building nearby was the information centre with snacks and bathrooms made it much more picturesque than the tourism riddled Niagara Falls. Surrounded by businesses and buildings. Gulfoss got my thumbs up.

Back in the car we headed southeast (after the Garmin GPS lady sent us the wrong way down someone’s REALLY long driveway and almost directly into a group of horseback riders ) with the ultimate direction of Vik, the easternmost point that we’d targeted for our trip. On the way, we reconnected with the Ringroad and through a town called Hella. We could see this huge mountain to our left which we discovered was Hekla, believed to be the literal entrance to hell in medieval times until two daring students decided to climb it in 1750. It erupts with little warning every 10 years or so and last erupted Feb 26, 2000. Rob and I were hoping that since it was due for another eruption, we might get a show… but not so much. Oh well, it was still beautiful.

We continued along until we came across Seljalandfoss, a wonderful set of small but intensely high waterfalls which Rob and I both actually preferred to the larger Gulfoss. Seljalandfoss, and other small falls like it, running from a huge icecap called Eyjafjallajökull and over the edges of a mountain called Eyjafjöll. This stop wasn’t on our route but we couldn’t resist. If we had known better, we would’ve worn water-proof clothes because you can walk right behind these falls and although you’d get totally soaked by mist, it’s apparently a powerful experience… oh well, next time.






Continuing along southeast, this is where we hit the cloud cover that mists the mountain and hides the mountaintop and icecaps from view. The whole time we thought it would rain, but it never did more than spit a little. We finally hit Vik, and aside from being wonderfully picturesque, the only point of interest we found was this mustache hat. Which was awesome.



We headed back home but took a detour over to Dyrhólaey where we hoped to see the puffins that nest in the cliff faces there and hunt in the Atlantic Ocean. We didn’t see any up close, but we did see an island rock out in the water that we firmly believe was covered in puffins. However, being by the Ocean was really amazing and we did touch the Ocean. The black sand is so beautiful and makes it looks like the rocks themselves were burnt and smoldering. The shapes in the rock also made for some beautiful textures and we also found what we think were probably some kind of military defense outposts left over on the coastline. You also got a great view of the Three Trolls, an interesting rock formation named because the Icelanders believe they were three trolls who didn’t hide from the sun soon enough and turned to stone.



Back in the car, we headed west back toward Reykjavik. On our way we admired the jutting shapes of the Westman Islands off the Southern edge of Icelend. We thought they were called that because of their location relative to Reykjavik, but discovered it was because two Viking brothers brought English slaves back with them. They called the English Westman because of their geographical relation to Iceland, and one night the slaves rebelled, killing one of the brothers and escaping to the Islands off Iceland. The remaining brother hunted down and killed the escaped slaves in an act of vengeance, and that’s why they were named that. Much cooler story than what we’d assumed!





The drive back took us through fertile farmland where the Islanders were harvesting and bailing their crops of hay, the main crop in the area we were in. The round bales are wrapped in white or black plastic and stored for use to feed at the Icelandic horses, sheep and cattle for the rest of the year. We found we would drive over these interesting grates in the road every now and then and wondered what they were for. I finally made the connection with a recent conversation I had with my Opa and Oma about the Canadian Prairies and how there are no gates across the roads but, rather, a series of poles with spaces in between that were no problem for car tires but something the cattle’s wouldn’t cross. Apparently Iceland had done the exact same thing with a grid of steel that the sheep wouldn’t cross. It was really fun to see the sheep EVERYWHERE and even freely walking across the road sometimes.
Made it back to Reykjavik and dropped the car off, then walked back to the hotel, which took about 20 minutes.

Can’t wait to see what waits for us in Holland!