The land of fire and ice

The Northern Lights may have evaded us, but our week in Iceland – often called ‘the land of fire and ice’ – nonetheless produced some of the most spectacular landscapes of our trip to date.

After arriving in the capital Reykjavík, picking up our shitbox hire car and checking into our Airbnb apartment, we planned four big days of all Iceland has to offer – national parks, glaciers, geysers, hot springs, volcanoes and lava caves!

We started with Iceland’s most visited national park, Thingvellir, just 45 minutes outside the city.

The park’s sights include Flosagja canyon, Oxararfoss Waterfall and the largest lake in Iceland, Thingvallavatn.

Underneath the lake is where two major tectonic plates famously meet – the North American plate to the west and the Eurasia plate to the east. This meeting of two major plates creates much of the unique geological and volcanic activity that defines the island nation.

Some visitors even braved the freezing cold waters to snorkel over the top of the crevasse!

Thingvellir has wider cultural significance to Icelanders as the area had been the meeting place of the national Parliament from the 10th to the 18th centuries.

‘Law rock’, which housed the old court, was a popular spot for sightseers, as was the Prime Minister’s modest summer residence, which is still used to this day.

We then travelled to the famous Strokkur Geyser, where the water temperature sits at 80-100 degrees, and watched it boil and erupt 20 metres into the air a few times. Jess suggested Tom dip his toes in the water (yep, seriously) but thankfully he’s too clever for that.

Our last stop for the day was the Gullfoss Falls. We’d see several impressive waterfalls in Iceland, but as a key stop on the well-worn Golden Circle, this is the most visited and photographed.

That night would be the first of a few unsuccessful attempts to see the northern lights (or more scientifically, the ‘Aurora Borealis). After dinner we drove back out near the national park, found a dark spot and sat for what we planned to be quite a few hours waiting.

However before long heavy cloud cover came over so we called it a night. Heavy clouds and low Aurora activity would continue the whole week unfortunately.

The next day we were very excited to be doing a guided glacier walk – for many a ‘must do’ activity in Iceland.

We drove two hours south in pouring rain (and darkness, with Iceland’s sun not rising until 10am), until we reached the Sólheimajökull Glacier.

The Sólheimajökull Glacier is about 30km long and fed by one of Iceland’s 10 or so massive ice caps (this one, called ‘Mýrdalsjökull’ covers 600 square metres yet is still nowhere near the largest).

We had a guide all to ourselves and it was a surreal experience climbing up a 30 metre high glacier and learning all about how it was formed 800 years ago and how rapidly it is melting (hint: very rapidly).

Thankfully, the weather cleared up perfectly for us as we reached the top, and we could see the gigantic ice cap in the distance, which sits several hundred metres over the top of an active volcano!

This volcano is being very closely monitored as the last time a glacier-covered volcano erupted in Iceland – in 2010 – it caused the biggest disruption to European air travel since World War 2.

Despite the enormous power of these volcanos, Iceland’s glaciers are so thick that regular eruptions merely create a pressure valve for the volcanic ash – not even the magma could melt the ice!

On the drive back we stopped by the Black Sand Beach…

the spectacular Skógafoss waterfall…

and the Seljalandsfoss falls – smaller but noteworthy for the novel ability to walk behind it.

The next day we drove to the small town of Hveragerði and walked the 3.5km hike through the Reykjadalur Hot Springs Valley.

The easy stroll produced beautiful views and if was quite surreal being heavily snowed on while the sulfur-filled waters around us boiled and steamed.

A spot near the end of the hike sees the river provide the right balance in temperature (ie the nice mid point between ‘boil alive’ and ‘freeze to death’) for keen travellers and locals alike to soak and bath in entirely natural surroundings. We sooked out on stripping down in freezing, snowing conditions, knowing later that afternoon we were heading to one of Iceland’s world renowned hot spring ‘wellness centres’.

While ‘The Blue Lagoon’ is the best known and most popular of Iceland’s hot spring day spas, savvy travel bloggers advise there are many alternatives that are less touristic, less expensive and more authentic.

We decided to visit one such alternative in the evening – the Laugarvatn Fontana (another great option apparently is the ‘secret lagoon’ but it closed earlier). With several pools all fed by natural hot springs and varying in depth and temperature, the Fontana provided a great night of relaxing and watching the stars (sadly no Aurora activity though).

One of the more unique aspects of this particular hot bath centre is its setting right on the shoreline of Lake Laugarvatn. This allowed bath visitors to heat up in its 48 degree sauna and then make a mad dash to jump in the icy cold lake.

This seemed like a bad idea but since apparently it’s actually good for you, we gave it a try. Surprisingly it turned out to be good fun. The trick is to jump back into the hot baths (set at 40 degrees) before the hypothermia sets in!

We didn’t think Iceland could possibly beat the landscapes we’d seen so far, but our final big driving day – in which we cruised 2.5 hours north from Reykjavík to Snæfellsnes National Park – produced the best yet.

Snæfellsnes is basically a big volcano, covered in snow and ice, sitting by the sea at the front of another of Iceland’s momentous ice caps.

Both the volcano itself and the mountain ranges lining the drive up there are a sight to behold.

Once at the Park we did a tour of one of Iceland’s many underground lava caves, formed when the volcano erupted thousands of years ago and its lava flowed toward the sea.

We also admired the coastline viewpoint and attempted to drive further north to one of the park’s largest craters but got caught in a snowstorm.

It was very weird being stuck in heavy snow while at sea level and in view of the coastline.

Instead here’s a pic of the Kerio crater which we actually visited the day prior on the Golden Circle, before heading to the hot spring bath.

Fun fact – we were out of the car for all of five minutes at this crater as the outside temperature was well in the negatives and the wind was seriously blowing!

On our final day in Iceland we took a much needed rest day and finished planning the next part of our trip – the UK and Ireland.

Just as well we did as the weather turned real nasty, with several roads closed and all flights cancelled due to severe winds.

Had we done more driving our temperamental Toyota Yaris may have been blown off the road (probably an improvement).

In terms of its natural wonders and photogenic landscapes, our week in Iceland was a highlight of our trip and certainly up there with the Canadian Rockies and Sahara desert for its uniqueness.

To close off this chapter of our blog, of which we can’t pronounce nor spell any of the sites, here’s some pictures of Tom making friends with a bunch of Icelandic locals…