Being 30 is rad as @$%#!: Myvatn

Myvatn (which is pronounced more like me-va) is a much locally beloved lake sitting in a geothermally lit up volcanic area. Or as Wikipedia would say 'an area of volcanism' - way cooler. The lake is surrounded by craters of various ages (my lack of historical enthusiasm makes this vague but it's a hefty spread of years from 2300 to 700 years ago), lava formations from eruptions hundreds of years ago, and steaming fumaroles and hot springs active from lying along the tectonic rift (or whatever that space between tectonic plates is called). Or that's the truth as I understand it, so maybe don't take my word for it.

The lake was pretty, the weather fantastic, and our timing total crap because it as midgie season! It only happens twice a year and we definitely got to partake. They were lined up twenty deep in our eyeballs, teeth and eardrums, 12.5 milliseconds after arriving. Standing still was not an option!

Hverfjall Crater

Hverfjall Crater rim

So even though it was five pm, we started a 13 kilometer or so hike around and got our midnight sun sunburn on, seriously. We hit up a big grey ash looking crater called Hverfjall (this got real technical real fast), Grjótagjá -some hot pools hidden in caves that appeared only as cracks in the rock walls, and then a weird world of volcanic lava fields called Dimmuborgir.

The roof of Grjótagjá

Grjótagjá cave hot pools - too hot to soak in!

Crystal clear cave water

Ridiculously old lava

Dimmuborgir lava forest

By 10:30pm, we were tired and had miles to go back to camp and were seriously stoked to hitch a ride back in time for an eleven pm upper in sunlight.

The next morning we abandoned plans to bike around the lake when we awoke to a sunny and seriously, seriously windy day- yay, midgie free! Instead we left for a stroll of the sights and trotted back into camp 20 kilometers and hours and hours later.

So many colours :)

The walk to the nature baths

Myvatn's nature baths

Scalding hot steam vent

We wound our way to the Myvatn natural baths-which we only admired as we're saving ourselves for the Blue Lagoon, though we did partake in their icecream. Then we walked out past a geothermal power station with incredible hot blue water, and finally reached the geothermal area of Hverir. Hverir sits below Mt. Námafjall and contains numerous boiling mud pots, fumaroles and vents. We saw more colours on this walk than I can name. Not a bad day at all!