The Golden Circle - July 4&5 2015

HAPPY FREEDOM DAY!!! WooOooOoo!!

Iceland is coming quite rapidly to a close. We can't believe it's been close to a month already. Even more surprising, we spent almost the entire time camping outside and within 3 feet of each other 24/7, and we still like each other!! We've really nailed this codependent thing.

Our last two days of travel before heading into Reykjavik took us to the Golden Circle. Lucky for us, these stops were included in our bus passes. The Golden Circle is a short route which covers the most popular tourist attractions in Iceland. Its popular because it's pretty and interesting but more so because its an easy day trip from the capital. For some it's the only part of Iceland they see (plus the blue lagoon) because it's done on short layovers between North America and Europe. We indeed thought it was nice but really pales in comparison the splendor the rest of the country has to offer.

Super Jeep!

Anyway. We hopped back on our MONSTER truck bus and headed an hour or so down an incredibly bumpy windy road to Gullfoss. The bus was full and mega hot, and since we couldn't remember what mega hot felt like after a month in Iceland we thought we were dying. All clothing except the bare essentials came off. After disembarking we proceeded to chat animatedly about how we had survived a great ordeal and need to immediately purchase ice cream and soda as a reward. This plan was severely impeded by the impressive price gouging going on in the cafeteria - 4$ for a coke and 10$ for a wee piece of cake? Is there a feature film hiding behind the concession stand? No, just an impressive feat of nature. Alright then I'll just take the free waterfall and you can keep your stupid snacks. (Ok, I may have sprung for the coke, but only because I was a survivor). I made up for it by jumping over the 2$ turnstile to access the bathroom - twice. I thought this was a totally reasonable trade, though didn't realize until later that there was CCTV. Whoops.

Back to Gullfoss. It's a multitiered waterfall that falls into a narrow crevasse which creates a bunch of blown back water, and gave the effect of rain rising from the ground up to the sky. It was cool to look at. The only unenjoyable part was that the place was teeming with people. Whether that has to do with being part of the Golden Circle or because it was getting well into tourist season, I don't know. After an hour of bumping elbows with strangers though we were happy to climb back aboard the bus and head to Geysir, our stop for the night.

Rain from the ground

Geysir is, you guessed it, a geyser sitting in a geothermal areas called Haukadalur. Geysir itself is no longer active but a second geyser called Strokkur is and goes off quite regularly every few minutes. We pitched camp for the night next door and had a view of Strokkur's spray from our tent!

Rain from the ground

Strokkur

We had important business to get to though and out we went hunting for freedom dogs at the visitors complex. Turns out they were the only place in Iceland not selling the usually ubiquitous hotdog, so we settled for some freedom fries and ice cream. And more Soda. And candy bars. I'm hoping we made some kind of real dinner as well but I'm not remembering it. We had a sweet tent date night and watched White House Down in honor of Independence Day, which was so amazingly bad that it was good. According to me anyway! (Soooooooooo bad says the husband).

Strolling through Haukadalur

I almost forgot about the super random statue pitched outside of Geysirs Hotel. I like to call it 'Ode to wrestling near a geyser'. Because that makes sense.

 

The next morning we got the bus to Þingvellir, the final point on the Golden Circle. We strolled around for an hour before the rains moved in and it was time to get back on the bus again. Þingvellir is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. It sits in a Rift Valley between the North American and Eurasian tectonic plates, and the drift between plates has created cracks and canyons and a reasonable amount of earthquakes. The water lying in the faults is an impressive shade of clear blue. All and all a pretty cool place to check out, though we didn't get to stay long enough to learn about the very robust history of the place.

We still like each other! ...oh, and an impressive fault.

Once back in Reykjavik our last couple of days were just for errands like laundry and the post office and internet chores for onward travel. Nothing too interesting.

All in all Iceland was amazing, spectacular, awe-inspiring and completely unreal. We had a ridiculously good time! We'll be back in a few weeks before we fly home and hopefully we'll be able to get onto some of the still snowy trails :)

We are headed next to the Faroe Islands - I can't wait!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Kerlingarfjöll - July 3 2015

Heading towards Kerlingarfjöll

A short trip back on the MONSTER truck bus delivered us to Kerlingarfjöll, a little oasis in a volcanic mountain range. Lucky for us the bus goes all the way into the campground saving us the 8km walk off the main road and a river fording.

We were also blessed with superb sunny weather even though we could see rain pouring down in just the next valley where we were yesterday. We pitched camp in a beautiful sprawl of grass between a hills and the river running through and headed out to trek after a late lunch.

Kerlingarfjöll normally has a plethora of hiking trails running through the geothermal mountain range, including multi-day hut to hut treks. But alas we arrived only just after the season opened and everything was still coated in snow. The hot pools a half hour walk from camp hadn't yet been located this season and were apparently buried in snow and rocks sliding down the hills. Even the road leading up to the Hveradalir geothermal area, some kilometers inland from the camp, was still snowed over and inaccessible. Hveradalir is the main attraction in the area and literally means something like hot spring valley, where the multicoloured rhyolite mountains drop down into a spectacular valley filled with fumaroles, hot springs, boiling mud pots and a beautiful freezing river. Lucky for us stubborn hikers had already broke trail over into the area and we were able to do the 12km route without too much difficulty. It perhaps was even more spectacular due to the fact that you hike up into the high snow covered plateau of the mountain range, and then see steam vents pouring out through them in a seemingly incongruous scene of extremes. I thought it was awesome!!

We're headed to those mountains

 

 

As it often is in Iceland, the decent into the actual valley was pitched rather steeply and fairly sketchy from my North American perspective, leaving you to exercise your own best judgments on how close is too close when it comes to walking near or over vents and boiling water sitting basically on the trail. But it was also ridiculously rad.

Frenchies getting ready to cross

Turns out when we got to the valley floor you had to ford a somewhat fast flowing and seemingly too deep river (for my short self anyway!) to get to the trails that lead you around and back out. That is unless you're content to turn around and basically walk straight back up into the mountains. No thanks! We found 3 hikers contemplating the crossing when we got there, an older french couple and a young lone hiker we met earlier on the trail, who had tried to cross but found it too deep. Us 3 youngen's decided to walk upstream a bit to the widest point and walked carefully over the hot vents perched right on the water edge. The ground was hot to stand on and the water was frigid. Anyway we stripped down to our skivvies, held hands and trotted across. Followed shortly by the older couple after we threw back our probing stick. Sweet.

Boiling water

 

After exploring for a bit we headed back up to the 'road' and followed it back to camp with Jo, our river crossing friend. Turns out she was only something like 19 and hiking and camping around Iceland on her own. Way more bad ass then us!

Following the road back

On a random note half the campers in the kitchen were either Spanish or spoke it so we stayed up chatting after dinner and then crashed hard at 10pm. Turns out walking forever in snow is pretty tiring!

Tomorrow we're back on the MONSTER truck bus and out in search of 4th of July hot dogs. It's quite lovely here and we'd stay longer if the hot pools and remaining trails weren't still buried. Guess we'll have to hit 'me up next time!

 

 

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Hveravellir - July 2 2015

Our bus passes skirt the ring road after Akureyri and takes the Klöjur highland route on an F road through the interior, eventually popping out at Gullfoss in the south. Which was sweet because that's the route we wanted to check out! F roads are only 4x4 friendly as they are usually dirt or gravel and may require a river fording or 12. So it was back onto the MONSTER truck bus!!

Bus views

Heading into the highlands

There's only a couple of stops along this road as it is neither inhabited or cultivated. In fact it's only passable in the summer after the snow has cleared, usually by mid June. Being a much colder winter than average it only opened a few days before we crossed it and the seasonal camps we stayed at were still very much in the process of setting up. We stopped for the night at Hveravellir nature reserve, a geothermal area with a hot pool, hot springs and fumaroles. The campground sits in a meadow with a hot creek running alongside it. We looked to be the only campers until a few private groups and tours showed up in their super jeeps later in the evening.

Our lone tent

There's a couple of hiking trails in the area, though the longer ones were heavy with snow and mud. We checked out the steam show and then hoofed it out across the snowy plains for a 13km hike out to an old crater and viewpoint.

Don't play with the rocks

Interestingly, tourist made cairns/rock piles are completely abhorred in Iceland, as it messes with their own longstanding route markers. Also it messes with their own rock placing history and with tourists outnumbering the population significantly every year the numbers of cairns are growing exponentially. So just don't play with the rocks, it's literally some kind of bylaw.

The hike was relatively flat with varied mossy, geothermal rockey and snowy scenes. Pretty enough to keep it interesting.

It ends up on the rim of an old crater with views out to the glacier and neighboring mountains. It turned out that one of the mountains across the valley is where we were headed the next day.

Our next day's destination way across the valley

As a side note the Siminn data plan I got for my phone totally worked out here on the crater in the middle of nowhere, and I was able to enjoy the view while iMessaging my homies in Canada. That kind of blew my mind. Of course it wasn't solely to keep the internet close to my heart. We got it strictly for safety as you can use the 112 app (their emergency service) to send your GPS coordinates and call for help should you fall down a mountain or get lost in the fog chasing sheep. And given how good the coverage is it's pretty legit. We felt fully covered for all our hiking.

Steamy hot creek campside

In the end we never ended up using the lovely hot pool because it started pouring rain and the wind got really cold and I was just too lazy to face walking there and back and having no way to dry off. I'm a princess you say? Yeah, sometimes.

 

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