Waterfalls, Geysers, CSI-Las Vegas, Its a Small World and Back on the Farm
NOTE: Sorry for the delay but wifi is difficult in some of the places we are staying at (we are talking dial-up speeds) and our schedule is very busy. But I promise to have a blog for everyday… it just may take a day or two.
We started out the day by getting our rental car… they were out of Ferraris… Bummer! So we settled for a really fast Nissan Pulsar with a whopping 112hp! Here is the car:
OOPS! wrong car… here she is with some hot Icelandic model I hired 🙂
Actually, the monster van (above) was parked next to us. There are a lot of monster off-road trucks here in Iceland.
After signing a bunch of paperwork and fiddling with the GPS, we were off to the visit the Golden Circle. The Golden Circle is a popular tourist route in South Iceland, covering about 150 mile loop from Reykjavík into central Iceland and back. It is the area that contains most tours and travel related activities in Iceland.
The three primary stops on the route are the national park Þingvellir, the waterfall Gullfoss (meaning “golden falls”), and the geothermally active valley of Haukadalur, which contains the geysers Geysir and Strokkur. Though Geysir has been inactive for a long time, Strokkur, on the other hand, continues to erupt at every 5–10 minutes interval.(per Wikipedia)
So we started at Þingvellir translates to the “Parliament Plains” because this is where the Icelandic government & general assembly was established around 930 and continued to convene there until 1798. Major events in the history of Iceland have taken place at Þingvellir and therefore the place is held in high esteem by all Icelanders. Today Þingvellir is a protected national park.
The place is unbelievably beautiful…OK on to some pics:
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| Notice the bug on the right side of the photo They were like gnats and they were everywhere. I must have swallowed 20 of them. They didn’t taste too bad and are a great source of protein 🙂 |
Here are few more shots from the area:
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| Close-up of a lava rock |
There is suppose to be a place here were the North American and European tectonics plates meet. BUT… I lost Susie for about 30 minutes (I think she was shopping) and I forgot to go to the place… drat!
After a nice picnic lunch it was off to the waterfalls. Here are a few shots along the way… the scenery here awesome!:
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| Here is Susie fishing …NOT! |
The Geysers
Next stop…the geysers. Here are a few shots as you approach the geyser sites. There are lots of pools of gurgling hot water…
There are 2 geysers at the site… Geysir and Strokkur. The Geysir geyser is dormant… they say it only erupts if the volcano is ready to erupt.
On the other hand, the Strokkur geyser erupts every 4–8 minutes and reaches 50-60 feet high and sometimes up to 120 feet high. I was lucky and got a nice sequence of shots as the geyser erupted:
Here is a shot to give you an idea of the scale of the geyser:
Gullfoss Waterfalls
The final stop was Gullfoss waterfall. Gullfoss is one of the most popular tourist attractions in Iceland. The wide Hvítá river rushes southward. About a kilometre above the falls it turns sharply to the right and flows down into a wide curved three-step “staircase” and then abruptly plunges in two stages (11 m and 21 m) into a crevice 32 m (105 ft) deep. The crevice, about 20 m (66 ft) wide, and 2.5 km in length, extends perpendicular to the flow of the river. The average amount of water running over this waterfall is 140 m³/s in the summertime and 80 m³/s in the wintertime. The highest flood measured was 2000 m³/s. (Wiki) Here are a few shots:
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| It was really windy and the rain & mist was everywhere. My poor camera and lens got a major bath at the falls. Luckily there seem to have made it through the ordeal. NOTE: Susie was my photo assistant… holding an umbrella over the camera and cleaning the filters. |
Here we are soaking wet…Susie seems to be enjoying it 🙂
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| I tied a few time-lapse photos which give the water a velvety look. What say you??? |
Here is video that Susie shot (she is my Steven Spielberg 🙂 ) This is the upper falls. At the end of the video you can see the main falls and the big drop-off.
CSI-Las Vegas Baby
After getting drenched at the falls, we dried out at the cafeteria at the falls tourist office. We met 4 Americans and had a nice talk. About 5 minutes into the conversation, they started getting excited and pointed out that the several members of the cast of CSI-Las Vegas had just walked into the cafeteria. Susie & I never watch the show so we just shrugged our shoulders 🙂
Its a Small Small World!
One of the 4 American (Breeann) told us she moved to Milwaukee a few months ago. The funny thing is that she called us when she got to Milwaukee because she saw a for rent sign on one of our rental properties. (She didn’t take the place because she was looking for a 3 bedroom and all we had was a 1 bedroom unit).
Back on the Farm
After drying out, we headed off to our hotel farm for a good night of sleep. We showed up at Ollie and Maria’s farm. We meet Ollie and asked if Iceland had any cows. We explained that all we see today were Icelandic horses and sheep… but not 1 cow. Ollie just laughed and said follow me. He took us to his barn, opened the door and before our eyes were 40 milking cows. We just laughed.
It is late and we are ready for bed.
See you in the morning…
Cheers,
J.J. in Iceland 