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20 SEPTEMBER: SELFOSS TO REYKJAVIK
We started our morning with a quick trip down the road to a bakery we had spied during our comings and goings. Delicious croissants in hand, we went back to our accomodation for the last time to eat and pack. It was sad to leave this beautiful apartment, and easy to see why it was so highly regarded (with a sticker on the front door showing it has a 9.8 rating on booking.com). We hit the road and made our way to Kerid Crater, one of the attractions we hadn't been able to fit in yesterday, which thankfully was kind of on the way to the day's other sights.
We arrived, paid a small admission fee and set off walking around the rim of Kerid Crater. Almost immediately after commencing our walk on the well maintained paths we were able to take in the view of the crater lake's beautiful blue water. It wasn't as windy as it had been yesterday, so we made our was around the rim with little fear of being blown away. We had gone counter-clockwise around the rim, and when we reached a point about a third of the way round we were able to see other craters which had been formed in a chain of erruptions.
We continued around the crater and were able to walk down inside, and around the crater lake. It was quite a nice place to be in the sunlight, which is a slightly odd feeling given the violent nature of how this place was created. Happy that we had not skipped this place, we made our way back to the car, and on to stop number two, Þingvellir.
Þingvellir (pronounced Thing-vet-leer) is a national park, about an hour from Reykjavik, full of natural beauty and historical significance. On our way there we passed a number of what appeared to be summer cabins, spread throughout the dense shrubbery. From what we understand, in much the same way Canberrans make their way to the coast, Icelanders have small cabins they use in the warmer months, away from the major cities and towns.
Eventually we entered the national park, where we continued along the road which had followed the shoreline of the nearby lake; it was just beautiful. We were surrounded by dense bushes in lovely autumn colours. We continued along this road for a little while before parking to see Oxararfoss and the rock formations nearby. Apart from seeing the waterfall we weren't entirely sure what we should be looking out for, but we knew that the Icelandic parliment used to be held somewhere near here. From what we had read it had first been held over 1000 years ago, pretty cool. Oxararfoss was pretty, as were the the rock formations, we took some photos but didn’t stay too long, as we were keen to get to Reykjavík.
Back on the road, we headed towards the capital for our accomodation for the night, the drive was unremarkable in typical Icelandic fashion (typical amazing scenery with mountains rising dramatically from nowhere). After a little while we reached some familiar roads, and before long we were in Reykjavík. We found a place to park in the city, walked around looking for somewhere to have a late lunch, and ended up at Bryggjan Brugghus. We ordered burgers and chips, and Phil got a sour beer called Sassy Sally, it goes without saying that we ate far too much. The place was quite nice, and even though it was around 3pm, it continued to gradually fill as time passed (we assumed we started a trend, because it was almost empty when we rocked up!).
On our 10 minute drive to our accommodation, we went right near where we had stayed on our first night. It was kind of funny that we had no idea how close we were to a number of decent looking places to eat (we can blame the jetlag)! We found our apartment without any hassle and unpacked, before realising we needed some supplies from one of the grocery stores. We were pretty impressed with ourselves when we made it to and from Kronan for groceries, without using any form of map. Consider us locals!
When we got back to our accomodation we watched some Netflix (luxury! We watched ‘Car Masters: From Rust to Riches’ - surprisingly entertaining) and worked on a blog post. As the evening passed it became increasingly clear that we would definitely be too full for dinner...whoops!
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19 SEPTEMBER: SELFOSS (again)
In a first for our trip, we started the day with a weather warning. Our car rental company sent an email advising that the north and interior of Iceland would be experiencing strong cold winds, rain and snowfall down to 100m above sea level. It also advised that people should postpone travel to these areas, we breathed a sigh of relief knowning that we had made it through the Westfjords and the north without any disruptions. The email also said there would be strong winds in the south, but there wasn't any recommendation that we change our plans, so we hit the road.
You could feel the wind on the car during the drive, but it didn't feel too bad, and certainly not dangerous. Today we would be seeing one of the taller waterfalls in Iceland, Haifoss, which has a drop of 122 metres. We were looking forward to it, but there was one obstacle in our way (aside from the wind): a particularly bad dirt road. We had done some research and decided we thought we would be able to make it, but to expect a bumpy ride. We were not disappointed, this road must be about as bad as it can get before a road is deemed an F-road. Potholes, large rocks and smaller loose stones were in abundance during the crawl to Haifoss. The road was about 7km long, our average speed would have been around 20km/h, maybe even slower. We got to the carpark eventually, which was also littered with large rocks to avoid, and were pleased to see only three other cars. Remembering something the care hire guy who dropped of Roxy had said, we parked facing in to the wind - to avoid any damage to the doors if the wind was too strong. It was a tough ask opening the doors as the wind was trying to force them closed, we got out and opened the boot, which acted as some shelter.
It didn't take long for us to get a sense of the power of the wind, as we were blown along the path down to where we could view Haifoss. We found that we could lean back and be held up by the wind, which was a very strange sensation. When we made it to the first spot to take photos we wouldn't go anywhere near the cliff edge for fear of being blown away. Not wanting to miss anything when we made it to the next viewing spot, we got down on hands and knees to crawl close(ish) to the edge and took some photos whilst laying down. Haifoss was very impressive, as was the fall next to it, called Granni.
As much as we were enjoying the view, it was windy (which made it scary) and cold, so we decided to head back to the car. We probably only had about 500m to walk in total, but it was probably the hardest 500m of the trip as we were facing headwinds worthy of their weather-warning status. The drive back was just as bumpy, which was not appreciated by Monique who was in need of a toilet stop. Once back on the main road we made a quick stop at a petrol station for fuel, toilets and yogurt.
It was still just as windy when we arrived at our next stop, Gulfoss. This waterfall is on a road called the Golden Circle, which is popular amoung tourists who aren't in Iceland for long, so there were plenty of cars in the carpark. We ate some lunch, donned our jackets and beanies and then set off.
Gulfoss really turned it on for us, as we walked along the upper viewing area the spray from one of the falls was catching the sun and giving a really vibrant rainbow. Show off. We really liked Gulfoss, despite the masses, and would describe it as a mini-Detifoss - in an endearing way. We then went to the lower viewing area to see the waterfall up close, this also allowed us to escape the wind momentarily. It was even more impressive seeing Gulfoss up close, there was a really good spot to take in the water tumbling over the main fall where we stood for a few minutes. After being sufficiently impressed, we set off for our next destination, which promised to be a steamy affair.
We made our way to Geysir geothermal park, and read a sign about some of the geysers in the park and rougly how often they go off. We saw the smaller gyser, Stokkur go off, which occurs every 8-10 minutes. Unfortunately we only saw a small eruption, and as we walked around the park we saw a bigger Strokkur erruption from a distance. We headed over to Geysir (the ‘original’ geyser: the one that gave the name to all geysers) for a look, keeping note of the time and doing some quick maths to figure out the window for the next erruption. From what the sign at the entrance had said, Geysir sends water much higher in to the sky than Strokkur. The wind was still buffeting us, so we decided to move Roxy to a different car park where we would have a good view of Geysir and could wait, out of the elements. We probably sat in the car for about 45 minutes, cameras at the ready, before we did some reseArch and realised that Geysir is essentially dormant. From what we could tell, there hadn't been an erruption since February 2016. A little disappointed that we hadn't realised this beforehand, we went and looked at the sign again, only to realise that the erruption window we had been referring to was for a geyser in America.
We thought we might as well see Strokkur go off again, up close, before leaving. We took up a position right near it and ended up staying to see three further exciting erruptions. This was excellent, because it helped us get over the initial disappointment of not seeing the other geezer in action, and to properly witness the natural phenomenon.
Feeling chipper, but a little warn out and over the wind, we deicded to not see the fourth attraction of the day, Kerid crater. We thought it might not be totally safe to walk around a crater rim in the wind, we also figured we could fit it in tomorrow if the weather improved. We made our way back to Selfoss to enjoy our lovely home away from home.
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